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U.S. Birthrates Fall to Record Low

142 points by jseliger 6y ago

merricksb 6y ago
https://archive.md/Mkn7f https://archive.md/Mkn7f
brenden2 6y ago
The Ponzi scheme that is the economy is not going to work unless there are lots of new entrants. We either need a) lots of births or b) lots of immigration. I don't know about other people, but the idea of trying to have a child is unfathomable to me because I am very, very far away from being (economically) in a place where I feel comfortable breeding. As someone who doesn't fit the mold society wants me to be (i.e., a real contrarian but not in the hip cool SV way), there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being human is really about: procreation. PS[edit]: Idiocracy is a great film and everyone should watch it.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  Why does the economy require new entrants?
  - brenden2 6y ago
    Where do you think the growth comes from? More people at the bottom push up everyone at the top.
    - notduncansmith 6y ago
      Not “everyone”. Imagine the economy like a tank of water, and each person a single molecule of H20, and proximity to the top of the tank represents relative wealth. So all the water molecules are constantly shifting a bit, but mostly stay in place unless something shakes up the tank. If you sprinkle water on the top, those molecules stay mostly at the top: rich parents’ kids mostly stay rich. If you feed water in through a pump at the bottom, most of those molecules will stay at the bottom: poor parents’ kids usually stay poor. In general, the closer you are to the top or bottom, the more likely you are to stay there. Adding from the bottom pushes the people at the top even higher, yes; but those in between the bottom and top mostly just shift around as the middle gets wider.
      - brenden2 6y ago
        It's more like a pyramid, where the people at the top of the pyramid go farther up the more people you add to the bottom. The size of the whole pyramid increases over time, and some people might move up or down a few levels, but the majority of people will spend their whole lives near the bottom.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - scld 6y ago
      That's not where per capita growth comes from...
      - brenden2 6y ago
        Most per-capita growth is just inflation. Additionally, metrics like CPI don't include inflation of assets like real estate, even though the utility of a home doesn't change over time without some kind of upgrades. Real estate in particular is inflated largely because of the ease of acquiring leverage.
    - empath75 6y ago
      You still have innovation in a stable population size.
      - brenden2 6y ago
        What's "innovation" these days? More ads? An iPhone with 5 cameras? A new SaaS product that's a glorified spreadsheet/database?
  - spamizbad 6y ago
    You need human beings to actually produce stuff and grow the economy, which drives most public and private retirement accounts (we're not just talking about social security here).
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      Sure, but why do you need an increasing number of them?
      - hiram112 6y ago
        > but why do you need an increasing number of them? Because most public and private retirement accounts assumed that the growth would occur, thus it was okay to promise themselves a pension and health package that was very, very generous based on lots of younger people paying X%. They literally are pyramid schemas which require a larger group of workers to support. In other words, they calculated something like 'When I'm 63, there will be 4 workers available for each retiree, and each worker can afford to pay $15K a year in taxes to support that $60K / year pension.' Well, it turns out there are only 3 workers for each retiree. So either the workers need to be taxed $20K each to support this pensioner, or the pensioner has to take a 25% cut.
        ikeboy 6y ago
        I'll refer you to my post arguing against this exact claim: https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/dr74i0/life_is_not_a_ponzi_scheme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/dr74i0/life_i...
  - weatherman2 6y ago
    A couple of reasons: -As people grow old, they are economically dependent upon people younger than them. -A growing population goes hand-in-hand with a growing economy. This tends to bring prosperity to many people. And as a bit of a tangent: The argument that a shrinking population is good for the planet and is therefore better than a growing population feels to me like an extremely pessimistic argument, and the people that I personally know that embrace it have a much less human-centric moral intuition than I do. I put a lot lot lot more worth on human happiness than that of animals, and to me it seems that a cultural disconnect from the natural act of procreation implies an unhappiness that is rooted in how cultures are run nowadays.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      You're just repeating the premise. Why does a growing economy require a growing population? There's not a very strong correlation between population and GDP per capita - the US has the highest GDP and there's several countries with significantly larger populations.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      As automation comes online, the amount of wealth generated per unit of human labor goes up. A growing economy requires, in the large, an increasing labor pool, but that labor can be human or machine-amplified human. If the amplification rate is growing fast enough, we can grow the economy with a shrinking headcount. (The other side of the equation---consumption---also balances out; people with more leisure time consume more).
    - econcon 6y ago
      >-A growing population goes hand-in-hand with a growing economy. This tends to bring prosperity to many people To have higher GPD US atleast doesn't require more population. Here is why: 1. American companies sell outside US so we can benefit from selling to India, china and Europe. 2.Even if we aren't exporting to some countries, there is still demand for our currency as they can use it to trade for other things like petroleum 4. Even if we've no petrol or exports, rich people and companies from other countries invest in our treasury bills, bonds and stock market. Look at how many companies of different countries even like the ones from UK, India and China invest into US market because of its safety
  - raldi 6y ago
    The American Dream is that all families climb the ladder to the point where they own a house that always goes up in value and a stock market portfolio basically guaranteed by federal economic policy to grow 10% a year over the long term. All those people earning money by doing nothing needs to be supported by an ever-increasing influx of people actually doing work. So we promise the latter the American Dream. Ponzi scheme.
  - creddit 6y ago
    The economy doesn’t and just about every argument that says it does shows very clearly the bias of those who make them. That said, there are many things social structures and institutions with embedded growth assumptions such as social security, pension plans, government debt, etc.
- empath75 6y ago
  > there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being human is really about: procreation. As someone with 2 kids and a third on the way, I think this is a really sad and reductive way to think about life. The way I think about the meaning and purpose of my life has changed since I had kids, but I had a perfectly meaningful and purposeful life before that. Focus more on finding meaning and making connections with other people, and less on your economic situation and whether you can afford to "breed". People who live in abject poverty can still have happy families, or live happy, meaningful lives.
- spamizbad 6y ago
  As a parent I personally think people are way too preoccupied with trying to have perfect material conditions before having a child. If you can put a roof over their head, feed, cloth, and love them and give them a mostly constant home environment you're doing your job as a parent. Kids are sensitive to their social conditions but oblivious to their material situation until they've entered preadolescence. This can be pulled off even in times of great economic insecurity (think about all the depression-era babies). It's arguably easier to get them out of way when you're younger, healthier and can withstand sleep deprivation better. Money won't buy you sleep unless you've got enough for a nanny.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    As the xkcd comic notes, we are, each of us, the tip of a long chain of people who lived in less than perfect material conditions and succeeded in raising a family anyway. (Of course, the same comic also notes "They did it, therefore I'm here, therefore I can do it" is the mother of all confirmation biases ;) )
  - Analemma_ 6y ago
    > As a parent I personally think people are way too preoccupied with trying to have perfect material conditions before having a child. I alluded to this in a different comment, but I think for most people the uncertainty is a bigger impediment than absolute conditions. If you had poor material conditions, but could at least count on them to remain stable no matter what, you could make that work as fair as raising a family. But the defining feature of the contemporary economy is that you'll never have that certainty: at any minute you might go from material security to being kicked out onto the street, and in the US at least you'll get no help except "Guess you shouldn't have had children lol; pull yourself up by your bootstraps loser." > This can be pulled off even in times of great economic insecurity (think about all the depression-era babies). I'm not sure what you mean by "all the depression-era babies". The Great Depression had the lowest birthrate the US had ever seen, and it did not pick up again until after the war: [0] [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-u...
  - folkhack 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Having a balanced age pyramid is not a Ponzi scheme: it's natural and healthy and as old as hunter-gatherer society itself. You want youthful energetic members, optimistic innovators and learners; middle-aged strong leaders, fighters, and innovators; and you want elder wise-people. There's actually a reason humans are long-lived past menopause: the old/grandparents provide a lot of value in social groups. The one way I agree with Ponzi Scheme... in the USA currently, at least, there's been a massive transfer of wealth to Boomers from everyone else via SS, Medicare, pensions, and all the cheap education and services that have since evaporated. I doubt these conditions will exist for anyone else...Boomers really got an amazing deal.
corey_moncure 6y ago
Meanwhile, "site developers" are in a mad rush to tear down miles and miles of virgin forest and construct new cookie cutter houses they expect to sell for $300,000 each, in my city. This, in the midst of the worst unemployment crisis we've seen since the dust bowl.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Any house being built right now was already in the works for a while. It only seems like this crisis has been going on for years.
- sjg007 6y ago
  There's some reasons for this... existing housing stock is old so requires renovation or maybe not available. People want also want bigger houses and maybe a little more land. So because you have the land people will use it. In places with land use restrictions or simply places that are out of room you see infilling and renovations. Schools play a big role and a lot of families want to move into neighborhoods with families in them.
ruminasean 6y ago
I suspect 9 months from the lockdown months will see a surge in births....
- raldi 6y ago
  Not for any couples that already have a kid.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    amen, brother
  - bitlax 6y ago
    This is snark that will be upvoted but not borne out by statistics.
- dudul 6y ago
  That would be kind of my intuition as well, but apparently a few surveys have shown that people were so depressed by the quarantine that they stopped... being intimate.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - josefresco 6y ago
    That lasted about 1 week in my household.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  I suspect you're wrong. Economic uncertainty hammers birthrates, and this pandemic has been the ultimate demonstration of uncertainty: in the space of a few weeks, we went from a humming economy to 20% unemployment. It's a brutal reminder that in the contemporary economy you can have the chair kicked out from under you at any second, and that's not conducive to having children. There also seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that people are having way less sex right now, for what that's worth.
iandanforth 6y ago
Curious how many people share this opinion, but I think this is extremely good news. I would love to see birth rates drop below replenishment across the globe. We simply don't need billions of humans. We have done, and continue to do major damage to our environment and historically a tiny minority has benefited from the labor of the majority. The people who benefit most from an increasing population are those who exploit people to increase their quality of life in clean sanctuaries while distancing themselves from the effort and waste required to maintain those lifestyles.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  It's tremendous news. The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed to 1 billion people (we're at ~7 billion, and on track to hit ~10 billion by the end of the century due to population momentum). Target total fertility rate should be as close to 1 as possible. This is a subject near and dear to my heart as a systems observation wonk, and have done a tremendous amount of research on the subject. I recommend these two books to those interested: Shrinking-population Economics: Lessons From Japan by Akihiko Matsutani Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? by Alan Weisman
  - prmph 6y ago
    > The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed (sic) to 1 billion I assume you have a reference for this? How do you know the carrying capacity of the earth is close to 1 billion?
  - throwaway55554 6y ago
    > The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed to 1 billion people... Where does this come? Is it referenced in the books you mention? I just have never heard this before.
    - alharith 6y ago
      It comes from ideology, not anything backed in evidenced based scientific research.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
meddlepal 6y ago
Kids aren't worth the headache (queue the parents telling me how their kid is the greatest thing that ever happened to them). I'd rather allocate the saved 500K-1million dollars it costs to raise a kid and use it for myself.
- abledon 6y ago
  diff strokes for diff folks
- patentatt 6y ago
  Or, rather than making a value judgement; how about ‘to each his own’ and we can all make different decisions in life for ourselves and that’s OK.
- brenden2 6y ago
  I agree, but it's politically incorrect to acknowledge the fact that it's ok to not breed, and it's also ok to not want kids.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - yardie 6y ago
    The only people that are not okay with you having kids are your parents and politicians. The former out of cultural and familiar reasons. The latter because city/town bond ratings take a hit if the population isn't growing.
    - brenden2 6y ago
      To the contrary, my mom desperately wants me to have kids because that's something that would give her life meaning.
      - croon 6y ago
        I think they (GP) missed/flipped a negation, and meant the same thing as you.
LordAtlas 6y ago
Anyone have a non-paywall link?
- hiram112 6y ago
  I've been able to read WSJ links with the Bypass Paywall plugin, Firefox, and UBlock Origin. * https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
throwaway55554 6y ago
Wait until January 2021. But on a serious note, even though my SO and I are doing very well economically (both engineers), it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a child with how expendable engineers are these days.
- alharith 6y ago
  Just have a kid if you want them. You'll never "be able to afford it." It will never make "economic sense" to have a child. Luckily, most of us do not place a monetary value on human life.
- swebs 6y ago
  >with how expendable engineers are these days I have never heard anyone say that. What kind of engineers are you? There should be demand everywhere.
  - throwaway55554 6y ago
    I mean expendable in the sense that as an employee you can just be thrown away if the market dips. Sure, you can maybe find more work, but you probably would have to uproot (not everyone lives in SV) and that's not easy with kids. My parents did that and it sucked; 8 different schools from elementary to high school.
- AndrewGaspar 6y ago
  > it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a child with how expendable engineers are these days. If you're working in some sort of Information technology, you're one of the least expendable employees in the labor market, at least as of March 2020. Only government and finance have lower layoff rates: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t05.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t05.htm
save_ferris 6y ago
I decided against kids a couple of years ago and I’m so glad I did. I just couldn’t see myself raising kids the way I wanted to and being able to keep my career and quality of life. And I see so many new parents just being ground down by it all, and that was before the pandemic. Without independent wealth, I just don’t see how people do it without making some incredible sacrifices.
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  They DO make incredible sacrifices: losing sleep, losing free time, everything gets messy and slobbery, kids are very expensive, they can get into trouble and worry you...on and on. Then again, parents see the trade-offs. They'll have someone to take care of them later, to pay some of that forward to society, plus parents are often the kind of people who love babies/kids and take joy and pleasure in the process. It totally makes the best sense to let every person decide if these trade-offs are worth it...but I do think we should support parents financially, as having a balanced age pyramid is an important thing for a society.
  - save_ferris 6y ago
    > but I do think we should support parents financially, I completely agree, but the cynic in me just doesn't see a scenario where this is politically feasible in the US.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      Maybe not now, but the generation coming of age now seems very different from the generation aging out. I think we could be in for an even wilder ride, politically, in the coming decades. But, I am an optimist.
    - rhexs 6y ago
      Just to be clear, America absolutely does support parents financially to an enormous degree. Hint: it’s not the middle class we’re supporting.
  - 6y ago
cwperkins 6y ago
A look at the charts tells a different story IMO. > Birthrates fell or held steady for women of all ages except those in their early 40s. Teenagers saw the sharpest drop, with a 5% decline in their birthrate. Since peaking in 1991, the teen birthrate has fallen 73%. Seems to me like people are waiting longer these days. We may be in a lull at the moment, but I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic conditions.
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Plus access to contraceptives, sexual education, and economic and social considerations -- lot of factors that could contribute to the drop in <24 year old group.
- jbeam 6y ago
  >I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic conditions. I expect that it won't pick back up because adverse economic conditions have already arrived.
- AndrewGaspar 6y ago
  If you push out the whole distribution of child births, some of those would-be child births will not happen. Female fertility falls rapidly after 35[1]. It's not something you can simply delay across the population and expect to get the same total reproduction rate. People will have fewer kids than they otherwise would have. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quantification_of_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quant...
keiferski 6y ago
I know this is a sci-fi scenario, but: don't overpopulation problems evaporate once space travel and colonization really kick off? In fact, at that point, it would seem that more people = better, at least if 'explore the universe' is something you think civilization should do. This scenario seems doable/likely within a few hundred years. Less if space travel becomes more than a niche thing.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  Unfortunately it seems the Earth is also going to be uninhabitable "within a few hundred years".
- orev 6y ago
  Space travel and colonization is so far off from a realistic option that you might as well be talking about Captain Marvel swooping in and saving the planet. The physics simply don’t allow it to happen (short of some truly major breakthrough like warp drive/time travel). And we don’t have hundreds or thousands of years to wait for things like that — the current trends point to a few decades at best to solve these problems. Also, colonization creates more people. The current ones stay where they are, while only a few adventurers move to the new place, and then have kids there. Most people are not going to give up a lifetime’s worth of building a life somewhere, at least not in the numbers needed to impact total population.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    I don't know, that seems a bit pessimistic. Right now, space travel is a tiny fraction of global economic activity. What if that increased 10x, 100x, or 1,000x? Submarines and self-contained vessels might be a good metaphor/approach, as compared to a full-blown colony. It doesn't seem implausible that we could have millions of self-contained spaceships, each carrying hundreds of people, within ~200 years, assuming that serious percentages of GDP are put toward it.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      We could, but hundreds of millions is a small fraction of our population and 200 years is too long if it’s an important part of the solution. Also, cislunar space is much easier than colonising the planets, which is in turn orders of magnitude easier than colonising other star systems — even if you can find enough people to do it, which is hard because why would Joe or Jane Average want to go to a deep space colony where ping-time is measured in years at best, or dozens of geological epochs at worst?
folkhack 6y ago
Anecdotal: Many folks in my social circles are just less willing to accept the real responsibility of raising a child. We're all late-20-somethings/early 30-somethings and I have the conversation all the time with people who want to wait until things like careers are established, until they have a chance to seriously travel a bit, and most commonly they just want to enjoy a relationship without the stress of kids. Kids are an insanely huge responsibility, and to parent right all of your life priorities change completely. Also, with religious stresses being almost non-existent in the groups I run in I feel like people aren't jumping into legally-binding marriages which causes the baby thing to be pushed down the road until they find someone they want to forge a lifelong relationship with. I think it's a super good thing when people take their time to find the right relationship for them! All-in-all I've noticed a big generational gap in thinking on this one because all I hear from tons of older relatives is "sooo when you guys getting married?" ...or even pushing for children before the fact. It feels unnatural and downright weird to field those questions and it's neigh impossible to explain "we're just taking our time to enjoy this thing and not rushing into huge commitments with marriage or kids..." We're just taking our time trying to do the right thing for us really... I just wish people would stop calling us selfish for that.
- Press2forEN 6y ago
  For two months, lockdown protesters have been called selfish for the perception that they stand in opposition to what their detractors believe is a more important obligation to wider society over their personal concerns. By the same token, having children is essential to maintain the social welfare state, and those that choose to travel or maintain a career instead are currently benefiting from that state while not contributing future workers back to it. I don't know what the solution is, but short of dismantling the welfare state, there needs to be a concern on the part of today's young people for the perpetuation of the system from which they benefited so greatly.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    > having children is essential to maintain the social welfare state That's not actually true though - immigration happily supports the required population growth. When the whole world stops reproducing we may need a plan B, but that's not a problem right now.
mtalantikite 6y ago
I'd also emphasize the financial stresses of raising a child. Young people have huge financial burdens from college, live in extremely expensive cities, and the idea of adding a child into that life seems ridiculous. Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.
- nl 6y ago
  > Plus we have too many people in the world as it is. Just pointing out there is no real evidence this is the case. Many people use vastly less resources than the average American, and even at high standards of living this remains true. We are able to feed all the people in the world easily, with current (or less) environmental impact (just look at the waste we produce). It's choices, not carrying capacity that leads to environmental issues.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    You can't really live like a sub saharan person if you're in the US. Just sitting in an air conditioned office for a week probably makes you use more energy than the average guy in Sudan use in a year.
    - nl 6y ago
      And yet the company deciding to keep aircon at 21C instead if 25Cis made up of people and shareholders all who can change that decision. Plenty of green buildings are carbon neutral or negative.
      - lm28469 6y ago
        I've seen coworkers manually cranking the heat up to 25C in the middle of winter, people just don't give a shit. I live in berlin, you literally don't need heating if your building has any kind of insulation, you can just wear a sweater and be ok. But no, they even heat the damn stair cases no one uses because we have elevators.
        6y ago
ycombonator 6y ago
Just look at the number of pets being adopted by Millennials.
tlear 6y ago
It is pretty amazing that we are witnessing hard natural selection in action. Think of it like a disease that kills 50% of population. Those that have immunity get to pass their genes, rest die out. Sort of like pressure from smallpox. I am really curious how this will get resolved. Just collapse of current society with the values we have, some selection of properties like “need” to have kids imprinted even harder then it is now? Humans 100 years from now will be quite different to us it seems. I am also quite amazed at all the kids hate. In addition to all other awesome things they allow you to relive your childhood, chance to have an incredibly close friend, you can teach them what you know, do some incredible things together. Etc. Kids are not expensive unless you make them so. They can help you with stuff too you know..(that is if you raise them to be decent people and not just spend days staring at the iPad so they don’t bother you)
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  The most expensive part of a kid is stretching yourself to your limits to get them into the most expensive neighborhoods (I.e. best schools) possible. And the unfortunate thing is the data shows that this is the best move for people to make, as the peers you are surrounded are the biggest determinant of your future success (see opportunity atlas). Which is why people stretch themselves to the max with 30 year mortgages. It’s inevitable in a society with ever widening wealth/income gaps.
  - agensaequivocum 6y ago
    If you are putting off having a child on account of money you are doing life wrong. Plenty of large families have non-software incomes and do just fine. They may not be able to eat out but it's a sacrifice worth making.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I think most people would agree that having children while homeless is a bad idea. Where that line is is a personal choice. I wouldn’t want kids unless I could reasonably guarantee they’d be in a decent school district with some chance to move up the socioeconomic ladder. But thats just my opinion.
bfrog 6y ago
The US more or less hates kids and parents. You want more kids? Our society needs to reduce health care and childcare costs while socially making the "village" more of a socially accepted setup. I have 3 generations in my house with other family nearby. I can't imagine doing it any other way. The current job environment is you should be moving to where the jobs are. Why do people need to move to sit on a computer all day is beyond me.
- AndrewGaspar 6y ago
  Respectfully, I think reducing childcare costs is in direct tension with returning to an expectation that grandparents share some of the child rearing responsibilities. Hopefully an expansion of remote work can improve this situation.
  - bfrog 6y ago
    Childcare costs could be somewhat indirectly related to grandparents having to retire later or not at all.
- volkk 6y ago
  yep. agreed here. i would be more likely to want/have kids if i actually lived in a place that was built for kids (tons of space, nature, and a house). instead i'm stuck in the city with jobs that need your ass in a chair and the stress of subway commutes, tons of people, noise, no space. no wonder nobody wants kids. cities simply suck for raising them.
- cylinder 6y ago
  exactly. I left the US, and there are just way more young couples with kids here. People generally live near their family and have support and won't drop everything chasing jobs thousands of miles away. During lockdown we're staying with my in-laws w/ our 12 onth old, and don't know how this will not continue especially with two kids. Restaurants, long haul travel, bingeing TV, all that stuff are just superficial luxuries of modern life and not the norm and highly overrated IMO. It's time to return to a simpler life. Focus on family, free outdoor activities, vacations are simple road trips to nearby locations, camping and so on.
treespace88 6y ago
Society acts like having kids is a luxury good, and not a vital resource. You can certainly argue that we need to have fewer kids, but to expect parents to fully bear the responsibility of raising them alone drives down the potential of the next generation.
jimbob45 6y ago
We already know how to solve this: via tax incentivization to breed. Everyone even remotely familiar with history knows about the baby boom and knows that came about because of financial incentives from the GI Bill. Seems like the government would rather have the cheap unorganized labor of immigrants rather than do the right thing.
trabant00 6y ago
About the discussions for/against having children: quit justifying your choice. Most of the time the reason you think made you choose is not the real one and any argument can be countered easily, it only opens your choice to discussion even more. Especially justifying not having children with the state of economy, politics or social issues does not stand up to scrutiny if you look back in history. On the other hand simply and unemotionally stating "I don't want children (right now)" is as unbeatable as they come.
- ausbah 6y ago
  this is probably the most confusing comment I've seen in this thread the reasons people have for or for not having kids aren't real reasons because...history? or they're "easily countered"? some examples would be nice to provide context to these statements
  - trabant00 6y ago
    The reasons people _give_ for/against having kids are just stories they tell themselves. We want to seem rational and we feel the need to have a rational reason for our choices. "Economy is bad right now" and everything like this: historically the conditions to have children have been a lot worse. History meaning more than 50 years. Above is only one example of how you can open your choice to being countered when this decision is just a personal thing that should not be up for debate imho. I explained poorly, the intention was just to help mostly young people have a more solid stand especially against peer/family pressure.
gumby 6y ago
We had 8 years of happy marriage before having a kid, which resulted in decades of a different kind of happy marriage. I’m glad we waited and glad we became parents. What’s not frequently discussed is how many people are unhappy having become parents. It worked out great for us but one thing I learnt was how many other parents regret that choice. There’s an understandable taboo on discussing it (you have the responsibility, and you don’t want the kids, who had no choice in the matter, to feel unwanted) but a result of the taboo is that people feel pressured into shifting their life in a way they regret. One reason why I think it worked for us is because we waited.
twoquestions 6y ago
I'll try to put this in a nonjudgemental way, and after a few revisions I'm still not happy with the tone of this comment. Sorry about that. I find it really tough to harmonize the ideas that: 1) If you can't sell your labor to provide for yourself, you deserve to die. 2) You should have kids, and not only cost yourself $100,000 at least, and increase competition for resources. The cynic in me thinks people want to see others fail so they can feel better about themselves, and more people competing for labor and capital decreasing the demand for labor will increase the number of people who society will deem unworthy of existence. By the odds, any random kid isn't going to change the world, they're just going to be another mouth to feed, and more than likely going to make things somewhat worse for everyone else. This is a blood-soaked all-against-all kill-and-die world, and what is a kid other than another knife pointed at you? As far as I can tell, this seems about as rational as being proud to put out your own eyes with a red-hot grapefruit spoon. As far as the "Kids give your life meaning" idea goes, giving one's parents meaning is a lot to put on a baby who can't even lift their own head, or anyone else for that matter. We're told all our lives that we're on our own, that anyone who needs anything from anyone else is weak and doesn't deserve existence (which is both morally wrong and incorrect). At the same time, it's supposedly okay to force a child to emotionally support you? That doesn't make any sense. I can at least comprehend the racist argument, that it's one's responsibility to have kids to outcompete outsiders. I disagree with it for numerous reasons, but I can at least fit that idea in my head. Maybe that's a reason having kids squicks me out so much, is the only comprehensible argument to me I find repulsive and I've only heard it out of repulsive people. Is the desire to have kids completely ruled by biological/hormonal factors, or a fear of ostracism for not "doing one's duty"? A lot of people I know and respect are good parents and don't regret having kids, but can't articulate why they did, so I'm not under the impression that parents are all cruel, broken assholes (though in my hometown there were numerous examples of this). What is it about parenthood that isn't a curse on yourself and everyone else?
- zxcmx 6y ago
  People don't exist without parents. The parts which are not a curse are just the joys (and struggles) of existence. The part which is not a curse is you. In a perfect world the ideal people to answer this question would be your parents, but I don't want to presume. We get the families we get, it's just part of the deal.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I really want to have kids, but I don’t feel financially capable of it. I have a very good, stable job with a high developer salary and costs of raising a child are just way, way, way too high to consider it. I would at minimum need to be certain I have enough money to - own a nice, safe home we cannot easily be evicted / removed from (eg due to landlord preferences), within a short commute from my workplace and any school / child care locations we need. - have a personal savings rate that will allow me to fully pay for some child care options, school, and eventually college, and give my child some lump sum for an emergency fund when they move out on their own. - have remaining savings rate to still achieve some of my personal goals that I’m unwilling to sacrifice over child care, like traveling / vacationing, continued education, and supporting my elderly parents when needed. I cannot see a way to do this without earning probably upwards of $500k/year, so having children is just financially untenable for me. If home prices near major tech centers went down, or my salary went up, then I’d love to. But as labor share of wealth stagnates and urban real estate is increasingly priced out for average families, it’s just impossible.
game_the0ry 6y ago
Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced: > dot-com boom / bust (junior high) > 9/11 (high school) > War on Terror (college) > student loans (probably for the rest of my life) > the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic / career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I graduated college) > the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment / anti-establishment, etc > Trump as president > Covid-19 > narcissistic boomer parents > narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed > and a lot more that stresses me out From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level while cost of living is increasing. And you wonder why we are putting have having children? It's because we do not know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.
nine_zeros 6y ago
I thought the reasons would be obvious. The cost of living has inflated very rapidly in the last 8 years whereas disposable income has gone down because of high rent, debt payments and stagnant real incomes. What are they proposing? Millenials stay in school longer than ever, take on massive debts early on, pay ever increasing rent, train themselves up to a skilled worker for a livable wage, get a massive mortgage and THEN go sacrifice more by having a kid (whose education costs will be off the roof)? What a cruel joke!
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/Mkn7f https://archive.md/Mkn7f
ericsanches 6y ago
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m0zg 6y ago
Raising to record high in about 7 months.
thawaway1837 6y ago
No one I know wants to have a child. The primary reason? It’s super expensive. And people my age entered the workforce right before the Great Recession, which hammered their wages and they lost years of salary growth, followed by not even a decade later, a pandemic, which will do worse. While raising a child continues to get more expensive.
ianai 6y ago
Deciding to not have a kid seems like a functional downvote on the surrounding community and circumstances after the per capita growth levels off.
alexpotato 6y ago
I'm 39 and have three kids aged 4, 2 and 1 month old. I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length overview of the emotional pros and cons of having children: https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/ I like to think about it as kids are +1,000,000 points and -900,000 points at the same time. The average is probably a slight positive but the highs are extremely high and the lows are also pretty low. This TED talk goes into this in more detail and is also great about giving honest views of being a parent: https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_talk_parenting_taboos https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_... To make a development analogy: think of a time when you spent a huge effort trying to solve a bug in a code base you really care about. Finding that bug was incredibly frustrating and made you question why you even got into programming. Then, you find the answer and you watch your program work again and be better than it was before. This rollercoaster of emotions with a net positive outcome parallels very closely with having children.
RickJWagner 6y ago
Let's give it about a half a year, then look again. All this coronavirus togetherness has potential to move the needle.
kindly_fo 6y ago
Less people = less problems
QuantumGood 6y ago
http://archive.md/Mkn7f http://archive.md/Mkn7f

142 points by jseliger 6y ago

https://archive.md/Mkn7f https://archive.md/Mkn7f

The Ponzi scheme that is the economy is not going to work unless there are lots of new entrants. We either need a) lots of births or b) lots of immigration. I don't know about other people, but the idea of trying to have a child is unfathomable to me because I am very, very far away from being (economically) in a place where I feel comfortable breeding. As someone who doesn't fit the mold society wants me to be (i.e., a real contrarian but not in the hip cool SV way), there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being human is really about: procreation. PS[edit]: Idiocracy is a great film and everyone should watch it.

ikeboy 6y ago
Why does the economy require new entrants?
- brenden2 6y ago
  Where do you think the growth comes from? More people at the bottom push up everyone at the top.
  - notduncansmith 6y ago
    Not “everyone”. Imagine the economy like a tank of water, and each person a single molecule of H20, and proximity to the top of the tank represents relative wealth. So all the water molecules are constantly shifting a bit, but mostly stay in place unless something shakes up the tank. If you sprinkle water on the top, those molecules stay mostly at the top: rich parents’ kids mostly stay rich. If you feed water in through a pump at the bottom, most of those molecules will stay at the bottom: poor parents’ kids usually stay poor. In general, the closer you are to the top or bottom, the more likely you are to stay there. Adding from the bottom pushes the people at the top even higher, yes; but those in between the bottom and top mostly just shift around as the middle gets wider.
    - brenden2 6y ago
      It's more like a pyramid, where the people at the top of the pyramid go farther up the more people you add to the bottom. The size of the whole pyramid increases over time, and some people might move up or down a few levels, but the majority of people will spend their whole lives near the bottom.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - scld 6y ago
    That's not where per capita growth comes from...
    - brenden2 6y ago
      Most per-capita growth is just inflation. Additionally, metrics like CPI don't include inflation of assets like real estate, even though the utility of a home doesn't change over time without some kind of upgrades. Real estate in particular is inflated largely because of the ease of acquiring leverage.
  - empath75 6y ago
    You still have innovation in a stable population size.
    - brenden2 6y ago
      What's "innovation" these days? More ads? An iPhone with 5 cameras? A new SaaS product that's a glorified spreadsheet/database?
- spamizbad 6y ago
  You need human beings to actually produce stuff and grow the economy, which drives most public and private retirement accounts (we're not just talking about social security here).
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    Sure, but why do you need an increasing number of them?
    - hiram112 6y ago
      > but why do you need an increasing number of them? Because most public and private retirement accounts assumed that the growth would occur, thus it was okay to promise themselves a pension and health package that was very, very generous based on lots of younger people paying X%. They literally are pyramid schemas which require a larger group of workers to support. In other words, they calculated something like 'When I'm 63, there will be 4 workers available for each retiree, and each worker can afford to pay $15K a year in taxes to support that $60K / year pension.' Well, it turns out there are only 3 workers for each retiree. So either the workers need to be taxed $20K each to support this pensioner, or the pensioner has to take a 25% cut.
      - ikeboy 6y ago
        I'll refer you to my post arguing against this exact claim: https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/dr74i0/life_is_not_a_ponzi_scheme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/dr74i0/life_i...
- weatherman2 6y ago
  A couple of reasons: -As people grow old, they are economically dependent upon people younger than them. -A growing population goes hand-in-hand with a growing economy. This tends to bring prosperity to many people. And as a bit of a tangent: The argument that a shrinking population is good for the planet and is therefore better than a growing population feels to me like an extremely pessimistic argument, and the people that I personally know that embrace it have a much less human-centric moral intuition than I do. I put a lot lot lot more worth on human happiness than that of animals, and to me it seems that a cultural disconnect from the natural act of procreation implies an unhappiness that is rooted in how cultures are run nowadays.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    You're just repeating the premise. Why does a growing economy require a growing population? There's not a very strong correlation between population and GDP per capita - the US has the highest GDP and there's several countries with significantly larger populations.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    As automation comes online, the amount of wealth generated per unit of human labor goes up. A growing economy requires, in the large, an increasing labor pool, but that labor can be human or machine-amplified human. If the amplification rate is growing fast enough, we can grow the economy with a shrinking headcount. (The other side of the equation---consumption---also balances out; people with more leisure time consume more).
  - econcon 6y ago
    >-A growing population goes hand-in-hand with a growing economy. This tends to bring prosperity to many people To have higher GPD US atleast doesn't require more population. Here is why: 1. American companies sell outside US so we can benefit from selling to India, china and Europe. 2.Even if we aren't exporting to some countries, there is still demand for our currency as they can use it to trade for other things like petroleum 4. Even if we've no petrol or exports, rich people and companies from other countries invest in our treasury bills, bonds and stock market. Look at how many companies of different countries even like the ones from UK, India and China invest into US market because of its safety
- raldi 6y ago
  The American Dream is that all families climb the ladder to the point where they own a house that always goes up in value and a stock market portfolio basically guaranteed by federal economic policy to grow 10% a year over the long term. All those people earning money by doing nothing needs to be supported by an ever-increasing influx of people actually doing work. So we promise the latter the American Dream. Ponzi scheme.
- creddit 6y ago
  The economy doesn’t and just about every argument that says it does shows very clearly the bias of those who make them. That said, there are many things social structures and institutions with embedded growth assumptions such as social security, pension plans, government debt, etc.
empath75 6y ago
> there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being human is really about: procreation. As someone with 2 kids and a third on the way, I think this is a really sad and reductive way to think about life. The way I think about the meaning and purpose of my life has changed since I had kids, but I had a perfectly meaningful and purposeful life before that. Focus more on finding meaning and making connections with other people, and less on your economic situation and whether you can afford to "breed". People who live in abject poverty can still have happy families, or live happy, meaningful lives.
spamizbad 6y ago
As a parent I personally think people are way too preoccupied with trying to have perfect material conditions before having a child. If you can put a roof over their head, feed, cloth, and love them and give them a mostly constant home environment you're doing your job as a parent. Kids are sensitive to their social conditions but oblivious to their material situation until they've entered preadolescence. This can be pulled off even in times of great economic insecurity (think about all the depression-era babies). It's arguably easier to get them out of way when you're younger, healthier and can withstand sleep deprivation better. Money won't buy you sleep unless you've got enough for a nanny.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  As the xkcd comic notes, we are, each of us, the tip of a long chain of people who lived in less than perfect material conditions and succeeded in raising a family anyway. (Of course, the same comic also notes "They did it, therefore I'm here, therefore I can do it" is the mother of all confirmation biases ;) )
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  > As a parent I personally think people are way too preoccupied with trying to have perfect material conditions before having a child. I alluded to this in a different comment, but I think for most people the uncertainty is a bigger impediment than absolute conditions. If you had poor material conditions, but could at least count on them to remain stable no matter what, you could make that work as fair as raising a family. But the defining feature of the contemporary economy is that you'll never have that certainty: at any minute you might go from material security to being kicked out onto the street, and in the US at least you'll get no help except "Guess you shouldn't have had children lol; pull yourself up by your bootstraps loser." > This can be pulled off even in times of great economic insecurity (think about all the depression-era babies). I'm not sure what you mean by "all the depression-era babies". The Great Depression had the lowest birthrate the US had ever seen, and it did not pick up again until after the war: [0] [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-u...
- folkhack 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
WhompingWindows 6y ago
Having a balanced age pyramid is not a Ponzi scheme: it's natural and healthy and as old as hunter-gatherer society itself. You want youthful energetic members, optimistic innovators and learners; middle-aged strong leaders, fighters, and innovators; and you want elder wise-people. There's actually a reason humans are long-lived past menopause: the old/grandparents provide a lot of value in social groups. The one way I agree with Ponzi Scheme... in the USA currently, at least, there's been a massive transfer of wealth to Boomers from everyone else via SS, Medicare, pensions, and all the cheap education and services that have since evaporated. I doubt these conditions will exist for anyone else...Boomers really got an amazing deal.

corey_moncure 6y ago

Meanwhile, "site developers" are in a mad rush to tear down miles and miles of virgin forest and construct new cookie cutter houses they expect to sell for $300,000 each, in my city. This, in the midst of the worst unemployment crisis we've seen since the dust bowl.

rootusrootus 6y ago
Any house being built right now was already in the works for a while. It only seems like this crisis has been going on for years.
sjg007 6y ago
There's some reasons for this... existing housing stock is old so requires renovation or maybe not available. People want also want bigger houses and maybe a little more land. So because you have the land people will use it. In places with land use restrictions or simply places that are out of room you see infilling and renovations. Schools play a big role and a lot of families want to move into neighborhoods with families in them.

ruminasean 6y ago

I suspect 9 months from the lockdown months will see a surge in births....

raldi 6y ago
Not for any couples that already have a kid.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  amen, brother
- bitlax 6y ago
  This is snark that will be upvoted but not borne out by statistics.
dudul 6y ago
That would be kind of my intuition as well, but apparently a few surveys have shown that people were so depressed by the quarantine that they stopped... being intimate.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- josefresco 6y ago
  That lasted about 1 week in my household.
Analemma_ 6y ago
I suspect you're wrong. Economic uncertainty hammers birthrates, and this pandemic has been the ultimate demonstration of uncertainty: in the space of a few weeks, we went from a humming economy to 20% unemployment. It's a brutal reminder that in the contemporary economy you can have the chair kicked out from under you at any second, and that's not conducive to having children. There also seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that people are having way less sex right now, for what that's worth.

iandanforth 6y ago

Curious how many people share this opinion, but I think this is extremely good news. I would love to see birth rates drop below replenishment across the globe. We simply don't need billions of humans. We have done, and continue to do major damage to our environment and historically a tiny minority has benefited from the labor of the majority. The people who benefit most from an increasing population are those who exploit people to increase their quality of life in clean sanctuaries while distancing themselves from the effort and waste required to maintain those lifestyles.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
It's tremendous news. The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed to 1 billion people (we're at ~7 billion, and on track to hit ~10 billion by the end of the century due to population momentum). Target total fertility rate should be as close to 1 as possible. This is a subject near and dear to my heart as a systems observation wonk, and have done a tremendous amount of research on the subject. I recommend these two books to those interested: Shrinking-population Economics: Lessons From Japan by Akihiko Matsutani Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? by Alan Weisman
- prmph 6y ago
  > The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed (sic) to 1 billion I assume you have a reference for this? How do you know the carrying capacity of the earth is close to 1 billion?
- throwaway55554 6y ago
  > The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed to 1 billion people... Where does this come? Is it referenced in the books you mention? I just have never heard this before.
  - alharith 6y ago
    It comes from ideology, not anything backed in evidenced based scientific research.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

meddlepal 6y ago

Kids aren't worth the headache (queue the parents telling me how their kid is the greatest thing that ever happened to them). I'd rather allocate the saved 500K-1million dollars it costs to raise a kid and use it for myself.

abledon 6y ago
diff strokes for diff folks
patentatt 6y ago
Or, rather than making a value judgement; how about ‘to each his own’ and we can all make different decisions in life for ourselves and that’s OK.
brenden2 6y ago
I agree, but it's politically incorrect to acknowledge the fact that it's ok to not breed, and it's also ok to not want kids.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- yardie 6y ago
  The only people that are not okay with you having kids are your parents and politicians. The former out of cultural and familiar reasons. The latter because city/town bond ratings take a hit if the population isn't growing.
  - brenden2 6y ago
    To the contrary, my mom desperately wants me to have kids because that's something that would give her life meaning.
    - croon 6y ago
      I think they (GP) missed/flipped a negation, and meant the same thing as you.

LordAtlas 6y ago

Anyone have a non-paywall link?

hiram112 6y ago
I've been able to read WSJ links with the Bypass Paywall plugin, Firefox, and UBlock Origin. * https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

throwaway55554 6y ago

Wait until January 2021. But on a serious note, even though my SO and I are doing very well economically (both engineers), it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a child with how expendable engineers are these days.

alharith 6y ago
Just have a kid if you want them. You'll never "be able to afford it." It will never make "economic sense" to have a child. Luckily, most of us do not place a monetary value on human life.
swebs 6y ago
>with how expendable engineers are these days I have never heard anyone say that. What kind of engineers are you? There should be demand everywhere.
- throwaway55554 6y ago
  I mean expendable in the sense that as an employee you can just be thrown away if the market dips. Sure, you can maybe find more work, but you probably would have to uproot (not everyone lives in SV) and that's not easy with kids. My parents did that and it sucked; 8 different schools from elementary to high school.
AndrewGaspar 6y ago
> it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a child with how expendable engineers are these days. If you're working in some sort of Information technology, you're one of the least expendable employees in the labor market, at least as of March 2020. Only government and finance have lower layoff rates: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t05.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t05.htm

save_ferris 6y ago

I decided against kids a couple of years ago and I’m so glad I did. I just couldn’t see myself raising kids the way I wanted to and being able to keep my career and quality of life. And I see so many new parents just being ground down by it all, and that was before the pandemic. Without independent wealth, I just don’t see how people do it without making some incredible sacrifices.

WhompingWindows 6y ago
They DO make incredible sacrifices: losing sleep, losing free time, everything gets messy and slobbery, kids are very expensive, they can get into trouble and worry you...on and on. Then again, parents see the trade-offs. They'll have someone to take care of them later, to pay some of that forward to society, plus parents are often the kind of people who love babies/kids and take joy and pleasure in the process. It totally makes the best sense to let every person decide if these trade-offs are worth it...but I do think we should support parents financially, as having a balanced age pyramid is an important thing for a society.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > but I do think we should support parents financially, I completely agree, but the cynic in me just doesn't see a scenario where this is politically feasible in the US.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    Maybe not now, but the generation coming of age now seems very different from the generation aging out. I think we could be in for an even wilder ride, politically, in the coming decades. But, I am an optimist.
  - rhexs 6y ago
    Just to be clear, America absolutely does support parents financially to an enormous degree. Hint: it’s not the middle class we’re supporting.
- 6y ago

cwperkins 6y ago

A look at the charts tells a different story IMO. > Birthrates fell or held steady for women of all ages except those in their early 40s. Teenagers saw the sharpest drop, with a 5% decline in their birthrate. Since peaking in 1991, the teen birthrate has fallen 73%. Seems to me like people are waiting longer these days. We may be in a lull at the moment, but I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic conditions.

WhompingWindows 6y ago
Plus access to contraceptives, sexual education, and economic and social considerations -- lot of factors that could contribute to the drop in <24 year old group.
jbeam 6y ago
>I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic conditions. I expect that it won't pick back up because adverse economic conditions have already arrived.
AndrewGaspar 6y ago
If you push out the whole distribution of child births, some of those would-be child births will not happen. Female fertility falls rapidly after 35[1]. It's not something you can simply delay across the population and expect to get the same total reproduction rate. People will have fewer kids than they otherwise would have. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quantification_of_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quant...

keiferski 6y ago

I know this is a sci-fi scenario, but: don't overpopulation problems evaporate once space travel and colonization really kick off? In fact, at that point, it would seem that more people = better, at least if 'explore the universe' is something you think civilization should do. This scenario seems doable/likely within a few hundred years. Less if space travel becomes more than a niche thing.

bagacrap 6y ago
Unfortunately it seems the Earth is also going to be uninhabitable "within a few hundred years".
orev 6y ago
Space travel and colonization is so far off from a realistic option that you might as well be talking about Captain Marvel swooping in and saving the planet. The physics simply don’t allow it to happen (short of some truly major breakthrough like warp drive/time travel). And we don’t have hundreds or thousands of years to wait for things like that — the current trends point to a few decades at best to solve these problems. Also, colonization creates more people. The current ones stay where they are, while only a few adventurers move to the new place, and then have kids there. Most people are not going to give up a lifetime’s worth of building a life somewhere, at least not in the numbers needed to impact total population.
- keiferski 6y ago
  I don't know, that seems a bit pessimistic. Right now, space travel is a tiny fraction of global economic activity. What if that increased 10x, 100x, or 1,000x? Submarines and self-contained vessels might be a good metaphor/approach, as compared to a full-blown colony. It doesn't seem implausible that we could have millions of self-contained spaceships, each carrying hundreds of people, within ~200 years, assuming that serious percentages of GDP are put toward it.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    We could, but hundreds of millions is a small fraction of our population and 200 years is too long if it’s an important part of the solution. Also, cislunar space is much easier than colonising the planets, which is in turn orders of magnitude easier than colonising other star systems — even if you can find enough people to do it, which is hard because why would Joe or Jane Average want to go to a deep space colony where ping-time is measured in years at best, or dozens of geological epochs at worst?

folkhack 6y ago

Anecdotal: Many folks in my social circles are just less willing to accept the real responsibility of raising a child. We're all late-20-somethings/early 30-somethings and I have the conversation all the time with people who want to wait until things like careers are established, until they have a chance to seriously travel a bit, and most commonly they just want to enjoy a relationship without the stress of kids. Kids are an insanely huge responsibility, and to parent right all of your life priorities change completely. Also, with religious stresses being almost non-existent in the groups I run in I feel like people aren't jumping into legally-binding marriages which causes the baby thing to be pushed down the road until they find someone they want to forge a lifelong relationship with. I think it's a super good thing when people take their time to find the right relationship for them! All-in-all I've noticed a big generational gap in thinking on this one because all I hear from tons of older relatives is "sooo when you guys getting married?" ...or even pushing for children before the fact. It feels unnatural and downright weird to field those questions and it's neigh impossible to explain "we're just taking our time to enjoy this thing and not rushing into huge commitments with marriage or kids..." We're just taking our time trying to do the right thing for us really... I just wish people would stop calling us selfish for that.

Press2forEN 6y ago
For two months, lockdown protesters have been called selfish for the perception that they stand in opposition to what their detractors believe is a more important obligation to wider society over their personal concerns. By the same token, having children is essential to maintain the social welfare state, and those that choose to travel or maintain a career instead are currently benefiting from that state while not contributing future workers back to it. I don't know what the solution is, but short of dismantling the welfare state, there needs to be a concern on the part of today's young people for the perpetuation of the system from which they benefited so greatly.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  > having children is essential to maintain the social welfare state That's not actually true though - immigration happily supports the required population growth. When the whole world stops reproducing we may need a plan B, but that's not a problem right now.

mtalantikite 6y ago

I'd also emphasize the financial stresses of raising a child. Young people have huge financial burdens from college, live in extremely expensive cities, and the idea of adding a child into that life seems ridiculous. Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.

nl 6y ago
> Plus we have too many people in the world as it is. Just pointing out there is no real evidence this is the case. Many people use vastly less resources than the average American, and even at high standards of living this remains true. We are able to feed all the people in the world easily, with current (or less) environmental impact (just look at the waste we produce). It's choices, not carrying capacity that leads to environmental issues.
- lm28469 6y ago
  You can't really live like a sub saharan person if you're in the US. Just sitting in an air conditioned office for a week probably makes you use more energy than the average guy in Sudan use in a year.
  - nl 6y ago
    And yet the company deciding to keep aircon at 21C instead if 25Cis made up of people and shareholders all who can change that decision. Plenty of green buildings are carbon neutral or negative.
    - lm28469 6y ago
      I've seen coworkers manually cranking the heat up to 25C in the middle of winter, people just don't give a shit. I live in berlin, you literally don't need heating if your building has any kind of insulation, you can just wear a sweater and be ok. But no, they even heat the damn stair cases no one uses because we have elevators.
      - 6y ago

ycombonator 6y ago

Just look at the number of pets being adopted by Millennials.

tlear 6y ago

It is pretty amazing that we are witnessing hard natural selection in action. Think of it like a disease that kills 50% of population. Those that have immunity get to pass their genes, rest die out. Sort of like pressure from smallpox. I am really curious how this will get resolved. Just collapse of current society with the values we have, some selection of properties like “need” to have kids imprinted even harder then it is now? Humans 100 years from now will be quite different to us it seems. I am also quite amazed at all the kids hate. In addition to all other awesome things they allow you to relive your childhood, chance to have an incredibly close friend, you can teach them what you know, do some incredible things together. Etc. Kids are not expensive unless you make them so. They can help you with stuff too you know..(that is if you raise them to be decent people and not just spend days staring at the iPad so they don’t bother you)

lotsofpulp 6y ago
The most expensive part of a kid is stretching yourself to your limits to get them into the most expensive neighborhoods (I.e. best schools) possible. And the unfortunate thing is the data shows that this is the best move for people to make, as the peers you are surrounded are the biggest determinant of your future success (see opportunity atlas). Which is why people stretch themselves to the max with 30 year mortgages. It’s inevitable in a society with ever widening wealth/income gaps.
- agensaequivocum 6y ago
  If you are putting off having a child on account of money you are doing life wrong. Plenty of large families have non-software incomes and do just fine. They may not be able to eat out but it's a sacrifice worth making.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I think most people would agree that having children while homeless is a bad idea. Where that line is is a personal choice. I wouldn’t want kids unless I could reasonably guarantee they’d be in a decent school district with some chance to move up the socioeconomic ladder. But thats just my opinion.

bfrog 6y ago

The US more or less hates kids and parents. You want more kids? Our society needs to reduce health care and childcare costs while socially making the "village" more of a socially accepted setup. I have 3 generations in my house with other family nearby. I can't imagine doing it any other way. The current job environment is you should be moving to where the jobs are. Why do people need to move to sit on a computer all day is beyond me.

AndrewGaspar 6y ago
Respectfully, I think reducing childcare costs is in direct tension with returning to an expectation that grandparents share some of the child rearing responsibilities. Hopefully an expansion of remote work can improve this situation.
- bfrog 6y ago
  Childcare costs could be somewhat indirectly related to grandparents having to retire later or not at all.
volkk 6y ago
yep. agreed here. i would be more likely to want/have kids if i actually lived in a place that was built for kids (tons of space, nature, and a house). instead i'm stuck in the city with jobs that need your ass in a chair and the stress of subway commutes, tons of people, noise, no space. no wonder nobody wants kids. cities simply suck for raising them.
cylinder 6y ago
exactly. I left the US, and there are just way more young couples with kids here. People generally live near their family and have support and won't drop everything chasing jobs thousands of miles away. During lockdown we're staying with my in-laws w/ our 12 onth old, and don't know how this will not continue especially with two kids. Restaurants, long haul travel, bingeing TV, all that stuff are just superficial luxuries of modern life and not the norm and highly overrated IMO. It's time to return to a simpler life. Focus on family, free outdoor activities, vacations are simple road trips to nearby locations, camping and so on.

treespace88 6y ago

Society acts like having kids is a luxury good, and not a vital resource. You can certainly argue that we need to have fewer kids, but to expect parents to fully bear the responsibility of raising them alone drives down the potential of the next generation.

jimbob45 6y ago

We already know how to solve this: via tax incentivization to breed. Everyone even remotely familiar with history knows about the baby boom and knows that came about because of financial incentives from the GI Bill. Seems like the government would rather have the cheap unorganized labor of immigrants rather than do the right thing.

trabant00 6y ago

About the discussions for/against having children: quit justifying your choice. Most of the time the reason you think made you choose is not the real one and any argument can be countered easily, it only opens your choice to discussion even more. Especially justifying not having children with the state of economy, politics or social issues does not stand up to scrutiny if you look back in history. On the other hand simply and unemotionally stating "I don't want children (right now)" is as unbeatable as they come.

ausbah 6y ago
this is probably the most confusing comment I've seen in this thread the reasons people have for or for not having kids aren't real reasons because...history? or they're "easily countered"? some examples would be nice to provide context to these statements
- trabant00 6y ago
  The reasons people _give_ for/against having kids are just stories they tell themselves. We want to seem rational and we feel the need to have a rational reason for our choices. "Economy is bad right now" and everything like this: historically the conditions to have children have been a lot worse. History meaning more than 50 years. Above is only one example of how you can open your choice to being countered when this decision is just a personal thing that should not be up for debate imho. I explained poorly, the intention was just to help mostly young people have a more solid stand especially against peer/family pressure.

gumby 6y ago

We had 8 years of happy marriage before having a kid, which resulted in decades of a different kind of happy marriage. I’m glad we waited and glad we became parents. What’s not frequently discussed is how many people are unhappy having become parents. It worked out great for us but one thing I learnt was how many other parents regret that choice. There’s an understandable taboo on discussing it (you have the responsibility, and you don’t want the kids, who had no choice in the matter, to feel unwanted) but a result of the taboo is that people feel pressured into shifting their life in a way they regret. One reason why I think it worked for us is because we waited.

twoquestions 6y ago

I'll try to put this in a nonjudgemental way, and after a few revisions I'm still not happy with the tone of this comment. Sorry about that. I find it really tough to harmonize the ideas that: 1) If you can't sell your labor to provide for yourself, you deserve to die. 2) You should have kids, and not only cost yourself $100,000 at least, and increase competition for resources. The cynic in me thinks people want to see others fail so they can feel better about themselves, and more people competing for labor and capital decreasing the demand for labor will increase the number of people who society will deem unworthy of existence. By the odds, any random kid isn't going to change the world, they're just going to be another mouth to feed, and more than likely going to make things somewhat worse for everyone else. This is a blood-soaked all-against-all kill-and-die world, and what is a kid other than another knife pointed at you? As far as I can tell, this seems about as rational as being proud to put out your own eyes with a red-hot grapefruit spoon. As far as the "Kids give your life meaning" idea goes, giving one's parents meaning is a lot to put on a baby who can't even lift their own head, or anyone else for that matter. We're told all our lives that we're on our own, that anyone who needs anything from anyone else is weak and doesn't deserve existence (which is both morally wrong and incorrect). At the same time, it's supposedly okay to force a child to emotionally support you? That doesn't make any sense. I can at least comprehend the racist argument, that it's one's responsibility to have kids to outcompete outsiders. I disagree with it for numerous reasons, but I can at least fit that idea in my head. Maybe that's a reason having kids squicks me out so much, is the only comprehensible argument to me I find repulsive and I've only heard it out of repulsive people. Is the desire to have kids completely ruled by biological/hormonal factors, or a fear of ostracism for not "doing one's duty"? A lot of people I know and respect are good parents and don't regret having kids, but can't articulate why they did, so I'm not under the impression that parents are all cruel, broken assholes (though in my hometown there were numerous examples of this). What is it about parenthood that isn't a curse on yourself and everyone else?

zxcmx 6y ago
People don't exist without parents. The parts which are not a curse are just the joys (and struggles) of existence. The part which is not a curse is you. In a perfect world the ideal people to answer this question would be your parents, but I don't want to presume. We get the families we get, it's just part of the deal.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

I really want to have kids, but I don’t feel financially capable of it. I have a very good, stable job with a high developer salary and costs of raising a child are just way, way, way too high to consider it. I would at minimum need to be certain I have enough money to - own a nice, safe home we cannot easily be evicted / removed from (eg due to landlord preferences), within a short commute from my workplace and any school / child care locations we need. - have a personal savings rate that will allow me to fully pay for some child care options, school, and eventually college, and give my child some lump sum for an emergency fund when they move out on their own. - have remaining savings rate to still achieve some of my personal goals that I’m unwilling to sacrifice over child care, like traveling / vacationing, continued education, and supporting my elderly parents when needed. I cannot see a way to do this without earning probably upwards of $500k/year, so having children is just financially untenable for me. If home prices near major tech centers went down, or my salary went up, then I’d love to. But as labor share of wealth stagnates and urban real estate is increasingly priced out for average families, it’s just impossible.

game_the0ry 6y ago

Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced: > dot-com boom / bust (junior high) > 9/11 (high school) > War on Terror (college) > student loans (probably for the rest of my life) > the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic / career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I graduated college) > the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment / anti-establishment, etc > Trump as president > Covid-19 > narcissistic boomer parents > narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed > and a lot more that stresses me out From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level while cost of living is increasing. And you wonder why we are putting have having children? It's because we do not know what economic optimism and financial security feel like.

nine_zeros 6y ago

I thought the reasons would be obvious. The cost of living has inflated very rapidly in the last 8 years whereas disposable income has gone down because of high rent, debt payments and stagnant real incomes. What are they proposing? Millenials stay in school longer than ever, take on massive debts early on, pay ever increasing rent, train themselves up to a skilled worker for a livable wage, get a massive mortgage and THEN go sacrifice more by having a kid (whose education costs will be off the roof)? What a cruel joke!

neonate 6y ago

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m0zg 6y ago

Raising to record high in about 7 months.

thawaway1837 6y ago

No one I know wants to have a child. The primary reason? It’s super expensive. And people my age entered the workforce right before the Great Recession, which hammered their wages and they lost years of salary growth, followed by not even a decade later, a pandemic, which will do worse. While raising a child continues to get more expensive.

ianai 6y ago

Deciding to not have a kid seems like a functional downvote on the surrounding community and circumstances after the per capita growth levels off.

alexpotato 6y ago

I'm 39 and have three kids aged 4, 2 and 1 month old. I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length overview of the emotional pros and cons of having children: https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/ I like to think about it as kids are +1,000,000 points and -900,000 points at the same time. The average is probably a slight positive but the highs are extremely high and the lows are also pretty low. This TED talk goes into this in more detail and is also great about giving honest views of being a parent: https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_talk_parenting_taboos https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_... To make a development analogy: think of a time when you spent a huge effort trying to solve a bug in a code base you really care about. Finding that bug was incredibly frustrating and made you question why you even got into programming. Then, you find the answer and you watch your program work again and be better than it was before. This rollercoaster of emotions with a net positive outcome parallels very closely with having children.

RickJWagner 6y ago

Let's give it about a half a year, then look again. All this coronavirus togetherness has potential to move the needle.

kindly_fo 6y ago

Less people = less problems

QuantumGood 6y ago

http://archive.md/Mkn7f http://archive.md/Mkn7f