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Children have become more of a burden than a benefit in many ways. We once had much use for our children. When people were more independent and everyone pretty

• tclancy 6y ago
  I started to read this waiting for the punchline to a Dad joke. Kids can still mow lawns for sure. >This stuff is being pushed from the top. Is this some kind of Sparta thing? Like you all go up to the top of the mountain and someone pushes Dad off? Because if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works. >It used to be a mark of shame not to have a large family When and where was this? As someone who grew up Catholic it feels like that cut both ways. To be vaguely serious for longer than I want, my wife and I just had a long, unfun conversation about how hard it is to deal with her mom's dementia and I don't know that we could do anywhere near as well with dealing with it if we didn't have a kid of our own. It's a shitty Ponzi schema, but the alternative is being Shakers.
  • hammock 6y ago
    > if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works. Access to birth control and abortion, social services and welfare, trends in divorce and family court ... All of these things are top-down forces that create a tapestry heavily influencing human sexuality and the choices men and women make. One only has to look at how different things were 50 or so (or less) years ago before these things were as widespread.
    • Guy2020 6y ago
      Yes... other comment, see this one please.
    • stirlo 6y ago
      > One only has to look at how different things were 50 or so (or less) years ago before these things were as widespread. Was the average person happier under these circumstances? That's what should be optimized not keeping things the same for the sake of it
      • hammock 6y ago
        I wasn't making a normative statement. You can form your own opinion on what you prefer
    • jakemal 6y ago
      What suggests these are targeted "top down" forces and not just a natural progression of society and technology?
      • hammock 6y ago
        Why can't it be both?
      • mech422 6y ago
        While I don't really believe in a 'conspiracy' - I can easily see "targeted 'top down' forces" in the reverse direction...Limiting women's access birth control, abortion, etc. Hell - just getting your tubes tied can be 10x harder then getting a vasectomy. If societal forces can be so effective in limiting women's choices/options, is hard to believe they could have had a hand in expanding them as well?
    • ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
      Premodern society where women were effectively property, where religion dictated their role, where marriage and a woman staying at home were the social norm. You're trying to pretend like social policy is a new thing when the Catholic Church has been controlling the rights of individuals for a very long time. To such an extent that Kings were generally subservient to the Pope. And then those Kings and Queens did actions like the Inquisition where they forced individuals to either convert to Catholicism, be exiled, or be murdered. History goes through many stages of social belief intertwined with social control. In ancient Rome there was a plant that caused abortions and was so popular it went extinct [1]. However also in ancient Rome, Augustus patronized writers like Virgil to help instil "traditional family values" in the Roman population. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
  • Guy2020 6y ago
    Some people have extraordinary wealth and they have the ability to set economic incentives, policies, and cultural influences for certain types of behavior to emerge. There's a hierarchy to our societies, there are people with great power and people with little to no power. I guess the greatest magic trick of the modern world is to make people believe such things do not exist.
    • snowwrestler 6y ago
      IMO a greater magic trick is convincing folks like you that these rich people are actually powerful enough to control fundamental behaviors like sex and reproduction. It's a profoundly dis-empowering and anti-democratic message, which is of course why a lot of those rich people are happy for you to believe it. The reality is this: in every instance we know of, making education and birth control available to women (not forcing, just giving them the option) has resulted in declining birth rates and increasing standards of living. It's really quite inconvenient to be pregnant, to parent a newborn, and to be responsible for a child for 2+ decades. It's very rewarding, but it's also really hard. You don't need a global conspiracy to explain why many women limit or opt against it if given the chance.
      • Guy2020 6y ago
        Are you saying there are no mechanisms that allow wealthy people to influence human behavior on a large scale? Please read "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays.
        • inopinatus 6y ago
          The problem with your thesis is that it overlooks the centuries-long advancement of feminism in favour of a conspiracy theory.
          • Guy2020 6y ago
            It's funny how people dismiss things so readily by labeling them "conspiracy theory." I just can't imagine looking at a world with such great wealth inequality and coming to the conclusion that this is an equal playing field where everyone exerts the same influence on the evolution of humanity.
  • inopinatus 6y ago
    OP is clearly referencing the secret cabal who dictate the course of humanity with orbital mind control lasers. What they haven't realised yet is that this forum is exactly where the aforementioned illuminaATZ# NO CARRIER
    • Guy2020 6y ago
      Everyone has the same influence over society, right? There's no inequality that would give certain people more influence over things?
  • dqv 6y ago
    >Because if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works. First, a top dictating human sexuality is hilarious to read out of context. Also somewhat accurate. Anyway, I don't think they mean there is a concrete system designed to keep people from reproducing. It's more of a feedback loop where the richest people in the world get concerned about things like global warming, overpopulation, and whatever else risks their way of life and so they use their social capital to dictate ideas and ideals that protect them. They can do this with things like think tanks or social media influencers or whatever. It's not some highly organized psyop but it's effective because they have so much economic influence.
    • inopinatus 6y ago
      I think you're trying to very generously interpret a conspiracy theory that doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. Access to contraception, and a rise in women's education and employment, are not a message imposed on society by the wealthy, inadvertently or otherwise, nor have they occurred on the timeline of concerns such as climate change and resource exhaustion. They are social consequences of the Enlightenment.
      • JackFr 6y ago
        Consider how attitudes towards contraception have changed over time. There was a time, not that long ago, where the separation of procreation from the procreative act was considered harmful to both society and the individual. There is a cultural elite, who’s effect has been so profound, they have led you to believe that such a cultural norm as we enjoy today was inevitable and have convinced the world that taking a perfectly healthy reproductive system and making it dysfunctional is “healthcare”.
        • inopinatus 6y ago
          Contraception is not dysfunction. There is no cultural elite brainwashing me into believe otherwise. I can arrive at this position all on my lonesome, simply by rejecting the appalling prejudices of the Catholic church (and many other religions), misogynists in general, and bigoted authoritarians (but I repeat myself); both on the basis of the crushing harm they have inflicted over the centuries, and the colossal waste of talent due to the systematic oppression of women. As for this: > the separation of procreation from the procreative act was considered harmful to both society and the individual That depends who you read. If your selectively chosen history of the last 6,000 years consists entirely of texts written by and/or documenting the fun police, I can see how you might arrive at this conclusion. On the other hand, there have always been voices otherwise. Until the Enlightenment they tended to be pilloried and/or executed, but that doesn't exactly highlight the hypocrisy in charge as something to be desired, rather something to be abandoned. Again, unless you are amongst them.
  • jjoonathan 6y ago
    Old calculus: "I need to have lots of children so they support me in my old age. No matter the cost." New calculus: "Between retirement accounts and welfare, society will support me in my old age. Children are really, really expensive." It's economics, plain and simple. Of course there's a "top" and the "top" does dictate the structure. If you doubt that, ask: what percent of your income do you pay in taxes, and what percent of his income does your CEO pay in taxes (assuming you work at a typical bigcorp)? I'm not saying that "yolo all the way to carrying capacity -- and beyond!" would be a better policy, but it clearly used to be the policy and isn't anymore. Personally, I think we dodged a big bullet and took a little one. The "little" bullet is still going to hurt quite a bit, though.
    • Guy2020 6y ago
      This, but also people used to see having a family as being the meaning of their lives. In the modern world, the alternative meaning of life invention is the Career™. This alone, that people have been influenced to believe a career is a replacement for having a family, is highly suspect of "top-down" influence. We don't even have the perspective of how ridiculous career driven culture is.
      • jjoonathan 6y ago
        Yeah, the two are connected, for sure.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • nmfisher 6y ago
        I think there's definitely something to this, and I'd agree that career driven culture is very toxic. But I'd also hesitate to call it "top-down" influence. That would drastically downplay the autonomy we have in first-world countries. Nobody is forced to prioritize their career over everything else. In most countries, I'd say it's the complete opposite - tax incentives and benefits are usually structured to encourage child-rearing. It's too easy for everyone to blame "the man" or "society" for a mindset that is entirely self-inflicted - with the exception of the US system tying healthcare to employment. That is definitely a top-down influence.
• grugagag 6y ago
  It’s also education and contraception that have a role. I’d also add the high cost of living too as well as rising inequality.
  • koolba 6y ago
    Those are excuses that people make up to soothe their egos. The real reason people do not have children is selfishness. They think that the financial and time cost will deprive them of other material joys. It’s as sad as it is misguided.
    • grugagag 6y ago
      I would’t say that is the main reason but that is one of them, sure. Also the society has become a lot more isolated. I sometimes look at a modern societies like Japan or South Korea and am wondering whether the western world will follow suit.
    • Riverheart 6y ago
      You shouldn't assume the worst of your fellows. Life is complicated and there are valid reasons beyond selfishness for people to not want children.
      • balfirevic 6y ago
        There are no valid or invalid reasons, it's nobody else's business really.
    • kovac 6y ago
      Perhaps there's some truth to what you say if we consider couples who choose not to have kids at all. However, I think the cases that choose to have just one or two children are more common than those who choose not to have kids at all. I think financial situation better explains why people would stop at one kid rather than 3.
      • rayiner 6y ago
• all_blue_chucks 6y ago
  Pushed from the top? What on earth? Guy, there's no conspiracy required to explain urbanization. It is a simple matter of better agriculture tech. We just don't need much labor on farms anymore.
  • anon9001 6y ago
    It's absolutely pushed from the top. Nobody outside of extreme religious communities sees increasing the population as a noble goal. At least in the US, children are effectively a tax on the working class. How many people do you know that had to keep working to put their kids through college? Why do workplaces have tax-incentivized college savings accounts? Why does it cost employees to add children to employer-sponsored health insurance? The system is very much set up to disincentive having kids. If you do have them, the trade is that you will always be financially drained. Somewhere between 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Very few will ever acquire equity in anything. The American Dream is now working until you're 70, supporting 2 kids through college, building equity in your house, then reverse-mortgaging your property to hopefully cover your final years. You could argue that it's an organic evolution of our profit-driven system, but that system only exists because it's what the owner-class is pushing. Either we should accept that having children is a hobby for the rich and find other meaningful ways to live our lives, or we should have radical changes in society to increase family sizes.
    • Arn_Thor 6y ago
      This article is about global birth rates falling, which is true. But your comment is about conditions specific to the US. Yet birth rates are falling in countries which don't have the warped incentives you point out in the states, and where having children is supported (see Europe, much of Asia, etc.). So although you accurately point out that there are downsides, if not disincentives, to having kids in the US, that cannot be the driving cause of falling birth rates in the rest of the world. And therefore there's no indication of any kind of "top-down" force there either.
      • thatcat 6y ago
• runawaybottle 6y ago
  It also just costs more to do basic things. Buying a house, finding an apartment, college, finding a job (more competitive), there’s trends of more loneliness and lack of community, you have to learn graphql now, it doesn’t end, and so by the time you find yourself stable in all these things you’re much older, and well, worn out. Starting a family used to be the first thing you did, but now it’s more of the capstone that one could easily not burden themselves with after all of life’s bullshit. We are psychologically and financially exhausting a generation.
  • hammock 6y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted. Your point strikes me as worthy of consideration
    • Guy2020 6y ago
      Because the truth is painful. People don't want to believe things are bad. People will fight tooth and nail to hold onto their perception that we are living in some sort of utopia and that everything is sunshine and rainbows. I don't blame people that want to look the other way...it's not a pleasant sight.
      • 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
        It's sure ain't easy but if you take a look at the history of mankind it sure is paradise. War and famine have has been the standard, things we complain about are totally different now.
  • hunter-gatherer 6y ago
    Also not sure why you are downvoted. As a 33 year old working professional who jumped through life's bullshit tip finally start a family, this resonates.
• core-questions 6y ago
  > Children have become more of a burden than a benefit in many ways. If you view the purpose of your life through a purely hedonist lens, sure. If you view the purpose of your life as being a member of an unbroken chain going back to the very first living cell, with an incredible legacy to uphold and protect, the burden is really just a masked joy.
• cma 6y ago
  Agenda from the top? Birth control played no role even though it let individuals decide on fertility?
• sandworm101 6y ago
  It isn't just the choices. Young people are having less sex. Japan has noticed this. Declining sales of contraceptives but declines in both STDs and pregnancies, especially amongst the young. Incidents of the "oops we are pregnant" scenario have declined all over the western world. Western culture has for decades complained that young people have too liberal a view of sex. Remember those abstinence pushes in the 80s and 90s? Remember purity rings? They worked.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Guy2020 6y ago
    I attribute this to anti-social tendencies rising due to technology addiction. People are getting worse at social interaction. When you spend so much time in front of a screen, it has to have some effect on your ability to socialize. That's my take anyway.
    • Arbalest 6y ago
      I think you've found a confounding variable. The root cause here is that people are entertained by something that pushes their buttons. What you've said makes it sound like people want to socialise but are hampered. I would argue that people are not that hampered but rather choose not to socialise in a way which leads to dating (or community engagement) The main retort to this is, what about all those people who have a gnawing pain of loneliness. Well, with fewer people that pressed to find a partner, local community engagement is down. This forces dating online which results in people screening, judging and not taking chances, leading to a low success rate. This is not a consequence of a lack of social skills. When people engage in person, there are multiple interactions that occur which are not judgemental (in dating terms), leading to more opportunities for people to see the interesting bits in others.
  • randallsquared 6y ago
    I'm pretty skeptical that abstinence pushes and purity rings worked. I'm pretty sure that the slack was picked up by widely available pornography.
• jariel 6y ago
  Though there's some truthiness here, it's a very cynical take. Most people aren't thinking about the ROI of their kids, that ironically is a pretty modern twist. Birth Control is way, overwhelmingly the #1 issue, so far ahead of anything else. Condoms and 'the pill' are a very new phenom. Imagine before them, when every sexual act had a pretty high change of pregnancy. And then it's easy to understand how sex<->marriage<->family are so deeply intertwined in pretty much everywhere. 'Sexually active' basically guarantees children, children need stability, so it's 'nuclear family' or bust for the most part, before the pill. An enormous amount of social conditioning is baked into this. 'Working for corporations' is better than 'working in a factory, mine, or on land you don't own' ie serfdom, which would have been the default for most of our ancestors in one way or another. Undoubtedly, the 'thing we cannot say in public' is that double-working families has had a double effect on the family 1) less time and 2) more acerbically - the cost of living goes up, particularly for property, forcing everyone else into the same 'two workers or risk being be poor' trap. Playing with the reproductive system (I mean social system, not so much physicality), is really, really dangerous, as I don't think our individual intentions are all that positive - but the silver lining is that the world does have quite a bit of people, and that in many places, we do need to have less kids. Remember we're living a lot longer now as well. So at least for the moment, if India and Nigeria can get a grip on fertility ... it has upsides. The real challenge, and scary things is what this will mean longer term. Once Japan drops to a certain point, will they level out? Or expire? Hopefully we can work it out.
  • usaar333 6y ago
    Birth control is not the overwhelming #1 issue other than at the tail end. TFR plummeted continually from from 1800 to 1920 (from 7 to 3) in the US (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-u...). The primary issues were first increased probability of survival to adulthood (shift focus to raising fewer kids better) and then higher opportunity cost (especially for women who gained opportunities).
• aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  We should take a page from Jonathan Swift and consider eating them.
  • inopinatus 6y ago
    Counterpoint; quand les pauvres n'auront plus rien à manger, ils mangeront les riches.
    • aaronbrethorst 6y ago
      Indeed.
  • Guy2020 6y ago
    Capitalists want to increase their wealth. They have a well defined role in society. Our government is supposed to be a counterbalance to them...but the two have become intertwined, hence the problem. In my view, the will of the people is not being reflected in the government due to corruption.
• yongjik 6y ago
  America has had tons of immigrants working 24/7 to run a restaurant, a laundry shop, or a drugstore, while putting their kids through school. Most of them weren't forced to come to America or choose such a job: they did it because even maintaining a 24-hour convenience store is less grueling work than planting rice, and they're rejecting their children's "help" because they want their children to study and have even better, more comfortable jobs. Pre-modern agricultural societies had huge families because there was so much work that you could always use an extra pair of hands. (Also, many of them died off anyway so you had to factor that in.) You are looking at the past with a seriously rose-tinted lens.
  • Guy2020 6y ago
    I never said the past was a utopia...I was commenting on the modern disincentives for having children.
  • grugagag 6y ago
    Child mortality was huge, fixing that definitely provided a reason to put a break to the child bearing machine. There are still poor parts of the world where that is still the norm but it’s dwindling fast
• grugagag 6y ago
  I have a 2 year old. It was an accident as both I and my wife didn’t want children or weren’t ready. I’ve got to say that it has become the best part of my life and yes it is not easy when you’re looking in from the outside but becoming a parent changes you, you become more resilient, objevtives in life change, etc So, no, children are not a burden unless you make it to be.
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    It’s wonderful that it’s worked out for you, but I can show you to Facebook support groups of thousands of parents that abhor and regret having children. Children by their very nature are a burden because they can’t care for themselves. Are we arguing with the very data from this article? Clearly children are not that in demand if the fertility rate is experiencing a “jaw dropping global crash”.
    • daseiner1 6y ago
      children have been a cornerstone of human life from the start, but you think the outliers on facebook are the norm? everything the commenter described are not things one would “demand” before having children, but would only experience after having them. honestly, referring to having children as something that would be “in demand” is disgusting to me
      • grugagag 6y ago
        Yes, children "in demand" sounds like they are some kind of marketable product, it does sound a bit misguided. But I don't blame people who don't want to have children, when we are pressured to produce and be as productive as possible, to be the best versions of ourselves, to be always strive to have more and be ever more end always self improve, the place of parenting in one's life has diminished quite a bit. I am glad I did become a parent and in a way I am out of that rat race as my perspective, my goals, my wants, everything has changed and I think for the better.
• nikkwong 6y ago
  If your assumption that people are having less children because of a shift of the sense of responsibility in the modern era--then the counter-narrative could then be built that the birthrate could potentially rebound in a future where automation has replaced workers and people's sense of purpose is no longer a product of career motivations.
• xfitm3 6y ago
  I don't want kids because it means I'm legally tied to a woman who can take the majority of my income. The bias against men in the court system is a huge turn off. Not to mention that there is no shortage of people who want to give you parenting advice, especially in schools. I deal with enough politics at work. The last thing I want is to double my burden.
  • burfog 6y ago
    You're refusing to try because you might lose. This is taking a loss by default. It's like a sports team refusing to go onto the field. It counts as a loss.
• ojbyrne 6y ago
  If by “from the top” you mean women entering the workforce, perhaps. But to me that didn’t seem dictated by anyone.
• bsenftner 6y ago
  I have never felt this world was a place to bring children. And I am not alone. I rarely mention my feelings because it runs contrary to most people's stated views. Yet, any time I bring it up I get a minority sharing strong agreement. I'm 55, and I've asked my entire life the question "how can people bring children into this?" My childhood was no more unusual than the typical American Midwest dysfunction, too.
• bsder 6y ago
  > Children have become more of a burden than a benefit in many ways. Especially if you are female. Children turn your very nice life into a completely different one and take up an enormous amount of resource. I would even go a step further that in certain cultures simply getting married turns your life from a very nice thing into something destined for drudgery. Japan is a primary example as the woman is expected to take care of both sets of parents in their old age. Do you love some man enough to take that on? Or are you better off having sex occasionally and skipping the marriage thing? > I don't think these changes are natural, given how little control people have over their lives. This stuff is being pushed from the top. No need. People aren't stupid and can see the consequences of their actions. Lack of elder care support is probably becoming more crucial than lack of child care support. Children start with their needs at infinity and get more independent on a strict time schedule--elderly get more dependent on an indefinite schedule and their needs go to infinity right before they pass.
• towaway423423 6y ago
  Children have become assets of the socio-economic-intellectual monopolies that run countries today; they are barely entities that have any real familial roles or indeed any parochial roles at all. To paraphrase that kid from Boyhood: who needs robots when you can program humans ?
• X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  What would natural even look like in this context? It was only in the recent history that it was the expectation that your child would live and go on to have greater than replacement number of children. That is evident by the fact that for most of our species history the total population was fairly static. Pulling nitrogen out of the air and sprinkling it on domestic crops was real "unnatural" but it got us past ~3B