25 ms·
Americans Aren’t Making Babies, and That’s Bad for the Economy
- Reimersholme 6y agoSpeaking from a European perspective, raising children to be productive members of society used to be peoples retirement security. Socialised pensions where other peoples kids will be working to pay for your stay in the retirement home changes that equation completely.
- IanDrake 6y agoWomen joining the workforce is the real issue here. Society has not adjusted since that event. To be clear, this is not a criticism of women working or their ability, but a fundamental change in human behavior. It will take some time for society to figure this out.
- throwaway068 6y agoIt's not. Most people want kids. Put a 500% tax on China imports and the economy will become sane again, allowing people of every "class" to breath.
- IanDrake 6y agoI didn't claim women don't want kids, that's on you. My claim is that we now have an economy and standard of living set up for dual incomes. This is relatively new and is not conducive to raising children.
- chishaku 6y agoWe need to rethink the economy.
- eanzenberg 6y agoLet’s see..we have an economic system which brought billions out of abject poverty vs. a competing economic system which has killed and murdered millions. Oh but they had “free education”, very nice locations in Siberia. Why is this still in debate?
- beisner 6y agoPast performance is no guarantee of future results.
- sattoshi 6y agoWhen did Switzerland murder millions?
- eanzenberg 6y agoSwitzerland has low taxes and restrictive immigration. Sounds like capitalism to me.
- enlyth 6y agoIt is not a binary choice, we need to continuously explore whether there are ways we can improve the system
- luke0016 6y agoThat's called a false dichotomy.
- carlisle_ 6y agoHow do people still attack the straw man like this and reduce everything to “communism bad”?
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoIt's debated because it's not a binary choice. We can improve whatever economic system we currently have, even if it's better than other economic systems.
- eropple 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- apta 6y agoA good start is banning interest and other parasitic practices that underly the banking system.
- December_Stars 6y agoIf our economy damns us if we do have a baby but damns us if we don't maybe the economy is the issue, not us.
- eanzenberg 6y agoMore to do with the media telling you you’re damned if you do and damned if you dont.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIgnore the media, make time for your own research and critical thinking.
- saagarjha 6y agoWhich, in this economy, usually points towards “don’t have children”.
- mediaguilt 6y agoMore hate towards the media and always saying the media is guilty of everything is not going to solve anything. FYI biggest media companies are now tech companies, So what are we doing to improve things?
- cwhiz 6y agoI don't need the media to tell me either of those things. I can do arithmetic. Our economy relies on consumerism expanding infinitely. If people are having fewer babies that means fewer consumers. The easiest solution is to increase immigration but that's not such a popular topic in some political circles. It is easy to connect the dots here and see that there are problems on the horizon. On having children, the math is even more clear and obvious. Where I live it is estimated to cost $350,000 to raise a child to age 18 and this number does not include any type of college investment. Let's assume I want two kids and on the second one I miraculously get a discount on everything of 50%. And let's also assume I invest in a 529 so I can give my kids $120,000 each to go to college. We're talking 2020 dollars. I'll need to spend ~$3,000/month to raise the two kids. Not too bad when you put it that way. However... what is the opportunity cost of that? If I am conservative it's about $1.1 million. If the market works out well for me it's $2.2 million or more. And that's the real cost to me to raise two children. Somewhere between $1 million and $2 million. And people wonder why American adults are having fewer and fewer children? Humans are great at adjusting to their environments and rationalizing their decisions so when people tell me about how much they love being a parent I take it with a huge grain of salt. You can learn to love just about anything, even captivity.
- entropicdrifter 6y agoMaybe this should be rephrased as, "Americans have little hope for the future, and that's bad for the economy", since that seems to be the root issue for more than just this particular expression of American hopelessness
- HenryKissinger 6y agoLower birth rates are also happening in social-democratic European countries with extensive welfare states, social safety nets, and good upward mobility. It's not a uniquely American problem. Meanwhile, families in war-torn African countries, people whose best aspirations in life are to own a flock of sheep and live on a farm, are having 6+ kids. Low birth rates may be exacerbated at the moment by the economy, but people's preference for their careers and the quality and availability of modern entertainment (why raise kids when you can travel, binge watch shows on Netflix, play video games, etc.) are more probable causes.
- devalgo 6y ago>Low birth rates may be exacerbated at the moment by the economy, but people's preference for their careers and the quality and availability of modern entertainment (why raise kids when you can travel, binge watch shows on Netflix, play video games, etc.) are more probable causes Your comment fits your name, it is callous, lacking empathy and painfully out of touch. The idea that Netflix is the reason people aren't having kids in simply absurd...
- HenryKissinger 6y agoIt is a fact that as men and women become more educated and start earning greater incomes, they have fewer offspring. This trend has been observed on every continent. Greater incomes give one access to more of the finer things in life, which distracts from family planning. For better or worse.
- tootahe45 6y agoMore to do with women becoming more educated, not men and women.
- tomrod 6y agoSingle income household with three relatively recent babies here. That doesn't make me an expert, just someone on the front lines of this. The article makes me say "no duh". The economic tradeoff of kids versus no kids is crazy in most places in the US. If we hadn't been stuck in a cult earlier in life we probably would have waited to start having kids. In order to keep up you basically have to have two income streams or a solid business.
- Ericson2314 6y agoAmazing answer
- uptown 6y ago"If we hadn't been stuck in a cult earlier in life we probably would have waited to start having kids." Literally or figuratively?
- tomrod 6y agoWe were stuck by choice, until we both gained a sense of rationality and started to understand logic. Left soon after.
- enthdegree 6y agotwo by twos?
- tomrod 6y agoI don't know what this is (name? movement?) so I'm going to say probably not.
- FillardMillmore 6y agoWait - can you explain what you mean by this a little more? Stuck in a cult "by choice"? What cult? How were you stuck "by choice" if you weren't rational?
- minikites 6y agoImmigration would help this issue, but half the nation believes nativist and xenophobic rhetoric, so expanding immigration is a non-starter.
- Press2forEN 6y agoI assure you if immigrants arrived in the US and immediately assimilated and voted for right wing causes, you'd see a comprehensive plan for a wall on Joe Biden's website.
- Bhilai 6y agoImmigrant arrived in America centuries ago.
- linksnapzz 6y agoMillenia ago, even.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI'm sure it's unintentional, but to reach a 50% number, your comment perhaps lumps together two groups that are worth treating separately: (a) Persons who oppose large-scale immigration in general. Some of whom (perhaps a majority) oppose it for reasons you abhor: racism, cultural elitism, etc. (b) Persons who oppose only illegal immigration. Some (most?) of whom do so for reasons entirely unrelated to racism or cultural elitism. People sometimes refuse to differentiate (a) from (b), perhaps on the assumption that most persons espousing (b) are actually using it as a fig leaf for (a). Personally, I'm in (b-not-a), and it's very frustrating to discuss the topic with people who refuse to believe that I'm arguing in good faith.
- minikites 6y agoThe idea of there even being a "right way" to immigrate is very recent and tied to racism. The "legal" immigration process is so artificially arduous and strict that unless someone who believes (b) is out there arguing and voting for sweeping and comprehensive immigration reform, they essentially believe (a) by default.
- chadlavi 6y agothis is another one of those "why aren't millennials buying diamonds?!?!" out of touch takes
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt's Bloomberg, after all. I don't think there's anything wrong with studying the financial implications of a social issue by themselves.
- superhuzza 6y agoNo it isn't at all, the article is just pointing out the potential consequences down the road. The article is perfectly cognizant that having a child is an economic burden to individual couples: "Unromantic as it sounds, planning a family is a numbers exercise that factors in the age of the would-be mother, access to affordable child care, college costs, income, and job security. Toss in a national health emergency and an economic crisis that invites comparisons to the Great Depression, and the benefits of parenthood no longer pencil out for many."
- hstaab 6y agoSpeak for yourself, I made one this year. For the economy of course.
- speedgoose 6y agoCongratulations!
- hstaab 6y agoThanks! It’s a first for me. Nothing better.
- dandanqu82 6y agoYou need to make more than two to break the trend. Everyone person needs to have three or more for our growth metrics! Has it been three months since birth? Why haven’t you started on the next one yet?
- bantunes 6y agoMaybe people will start listening to degrowthers like Jason Hickel that advocate for a rethinking of our economical systems' reliance on infinite growth on a finite planet https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/27/degrowth-a-call-for-radical-abundance https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/27/degrowth-a-call-...
- nerdponx 6y agoThis is basically missing from the Jones paper that is cited in the article here. That model, as far as I can tell from my initial skimming, doesn't allow for something like "human societies adopting different customs and policies as population growth goes to 0 or below."
- GoToRO 6y agoPeople want to spend more time with their children. I propose the 3 days workweek.
- kylec 6y agoOnce schools closed and my coworkers started working from home due to the pandemic, I observed the opposite. Endless, unbounded time with their children generally made my coworkers less excited about having any more.
- watwut 6y agoThat is not time with children. That is time working remote with colleges remote while yelling at kids to stop making the noise. While also having second job as teacher.
- bickeringyokel 6y agoUnbound, while working 8 hours a day on your computer? That's not exactly quality family time.
- neltnerb 6y agoIt is possible that both things are true. People want to see their children more. People don't want to have to see their children more. And I don't think people want to have to coordinate educating their children on top of everything else they need to do. It's the unavoidable part of it, I think. If it was a vacation with a clear end date it'd be different. As long as people don't start blaming millenials and zoomers for not having kids when you see quotes like "60% of renters in West Virginia are at risk of eviction". This is happening because of economics, it isn't being done to economics. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/27/how-the-eviction-crisis-will-impact-each-state.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/27/how-the-eviction-crisis-will... Data link: https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiNzRhYjg2NzAtMGE1MC00NmNjLTllOTMtYjM2NjFmOTA4ZjMyIiwidCI6Ijc5MGJmNjk2LTE3NDYtNGE4OS1hZjI0LTc4ZGE5Y2RhZGE2MSIsImMiOjN9 https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiNzRhYjg2NzAtMGE1MC00N...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 6y agoThe Charles Jones working paper cited in the article is here: https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/emptyplanet.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/emptyplanet.pdf. His papers homepage is here: https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/papers.html https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/papers.html I haven't had the time to read it in full, but keep in mind that the paper lays out a model. It is not the model, it is just one of many many possible ways to model the world. As the aphorism goes, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It's important to consider how and why a model is "wrong", in order to evaluate how "useful" it is.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoIt is your patriotic duty to condemn yourself and your progeny to poverty by having babies you can't afford, so that somewhere out there, your retired parents can enjoy the benefits of social security and a slightly-better-performing 401k.
- RestlessMind 6y agoWrong. You are currently paying social security for your parents and your work is propping up the valuations of their portfolio companies. Your babies will be paying, not for their grandparents, but for you and your generation.
- echelon 6y agoA few ideas: - Grant tax incentives or write offs for children born. It'd be incredibly unfair and unconstitutional to scale with kids' grades due to socioeconomic backgrounds being a major factor, but perhaps educational expenses can be subsidized. Or maybe we should just put more money into early education. - Make family leave a mandatory benefit for parents of all children, born or adopted. - Open up to immigration. Don't shut it down. This seems like the simplest solution. - Maybe we don't need a bigger population?
- dustingetz 6y ago"Sufficiently Powerful Optimization of Any Known Target Destroys All Value" https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-hate-your-family/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha...
- ck425 6y agoIf the economy relies on population growth then the economy needs to change. Doing some back of an envelope calculations: Current Human Population: 7.80E+09 Current worldwide growth rate: 1.05% Current Land Surface of Earth: 1.49E+14 If we presume the latter figures stay the same (they won't) then in a mere 944 years the human population would be such that there's only one square meter of land per human alive. Granted we'd probably kill each other well before we reached that point, but the point remains, we need to figure out how to make the economy work with zero population growth.
- baq 6y ago> If we presume the latter figures stay the same (they won't) then in a mere 944 years the human population would be such that there's only one square meter of land per human alive. not a problem - with the current energy consumption growth we'll boil off the oceans in half of that time.
- neltnerb 6y agoHeck, at that biodensity just human body heat would probably boil off the oceans... if the people could feed themselves with nuclear greenhouses underground to avoid the limits of solar insolation. But the point that economics assumes as a tenet a clearly nonphysical core assumption is a problem. It is weird to me how hard it is to find academic literature on this. I guess they all figure it's either a problem that's so long term it's presumptuous to try to solve it so early on, that the definition of "growth" will just change to make it always true, or the math is just hard. My guess is the first two to be honest, they're plenty smart when it comes to math... just not always making realistic models.
- baq 6y agoI guess economists assume that economics is really a social discipline. When arguments about hard limits are made, they IME come from physicists. I particularly like a decade-old (time flies!) Do The Math series. The post which makes a prediction about the oceans in 400-ish years assuming 2.3% yoy growth in particular is here: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
- w-j-w 6y agoI think part of the issue may be in how we measure the success of our society. Developed nations may be wealthy, but it should be clear by now that "more wealth" isn't the most pressing issue faced by people in developed nations. Instead, maybe we should focus on why we don't have time for children, or why we kill ourselves at 10x the rate we did when we were impoverished farmers.
- Press2forEN 6y agoI would be interested in hearing arguments as to why the social contract doesn't obligate all able men and women to replace themselves for the perpetuation of its other benefits.
- watwut 6y agoCause practically, that amounts to state sanctioned rape.
- Ericson2314 6y agoBecause productivity has gone up so much over the past decades, we should have the same standard of living with less working ours / higher ratio of retires. Full stop. Screw "growth", raise the cost of labor so that we find all the unproductive weakest links and fix them.
- standardUser 6y agoThis is nothing that increased immigration can't solve. Immigration has insulated the US from the age curve that has afflicted most Western nations for generations.
- coredog64 6y agoUnpopular comment ahead. We need people to pay taxes and provide services for the young and the elderly. In general, that requires a high trust environment. Wholesale importation of immigrants without a plan to integrate them into the environment is not a high trust environment. One (very probable) outcome is the large community of unintegrated immigrants will detach from the responsibilities being placed on them. At which point we also haven’t solved the demographic problem that immigration is supposed to solve.
- standardUser 6y agoImmigration is the one and only formula the United States has used to grow into the largest economy and among the highest standards of living in the world. I'm not sure why you imagine this strategy is suddenly problematic. "At which point we also haven’t solved the demographic problem that immigration is supposed to solve." I also don't follow the logic of this line at all. Why would new immigrants working and paying taxes and having children not help the demographic situation?
- jgwil2 6y ago> One (very probable) outcome is the large community of unintegrated immigrants will detach from the responsibilities being placed on them. What do you mean by that? That they will stop working and paying taxes? Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoIncreased immigration is another old world idea. We don't have factories lining the shores of the 3 rivers in Pittsburgh making coke, iron, and steel. Bringing in hordes of uneducated masses does little for the US anymore, and Trump has turned off the only beneficial sources of immigration (educated) the US has - but this is also a limited resource.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoAnecdata: I have three. The youngest is at the age I got married, still single. The oldest is older than I was when I had all of them; not planning on any. The middle one is in Silicon Valley and too distracted by all that to even date.
- izzydata 6y agoMaybe the current economic system is not good for humanity. An economy based on an infinitely expanding population is a pyramid scheme bound to collapse eventually. Why does everything have to be based on endless growth rather than maintaining a net neutral?
- folkhack 6y agoTruth be told, I have a cushy tech job and I'm still scared s_tless every day of losing everything. Also, economically speaking, I'm probably who should be having a kid right now. Hard no. Not with these risks/anxieties. Get sick, lose it all - I've experienced it first hand. I feel like I don't have any sort of social safety net. I need so much more than I do right now to responsibly have a child and actually provide for their future (in the US, in 2020).
- pjc50 6y ago"Do this incredibly difficult, expensive and slightly risky thing for the Economy, an abstract concept which will not benefit you personally" is just not a convincing sales pitch. If you want that to change, you have to change one of those factors. Pick one. Or several. The physical effort of labour or child-rearing is not yet reducible technologially. The cost may be, but since that gets into questions of "welfare" it will be unpopular - people who themselves feel struggling to provide for their children are hardly likely to want to provide for the children of others. The risk is a similar question: America has a surprisingly high maternal mortality rate, and a notoriously difficult healthcare system for those who are not lucky with their employer's insurance. Wider social purpose? Is there such a thing in America, over and above money?
- platz 6y agoif it's true that a couple might be taking more risk than normal by choosing to have a baby during a pandemic, then it may also be true that those pandemic babies will grow up in an environment where they are more scarce and therefore more in demand, and so will enjoy advantages that they would otherwise have to compete against each other for, compared to the norm.
- devalgo 6y agoBetween increasing economic uncertainty, student loan debt, no mandated maternity/paternity leave, no sick leave, no vacation time, etc. etc... Is it any wonder Millennials aren't having kids?
- tootahe45 6y agoEveryone is always quick to blame their economic hardships as usual when this thread comes up. The fact is women don't want to reproduce or even be seen with a man <= to them in income, status and education. Women increasingly outdoing men in these three areas is the #1 'problem' here. I've noticed all of the women in my circle who did well in education and are pursuing white collar jobs tend to be permanently single (not that i ask them), they look down on my blue collar peers as stupid even when those men earn more.
- folkhack 6y ago> Everyone is always quick to blame their economic hardships as usual when this thread comes up. The fact is women don't want to reproduce or even be seen with a man [...] So let's blame women? Just making sure I'm reading this right. As a man who's been around the block a few times in corporate America, women are NOT outdoing us in "these three areas" like you seem to posit... This comment feels like mental gymnastics to justify misogyny.
- tootahe45 6y agoI would not blame anyone for their natural instinct.
- econcon 6y ago>As a man who's been around the block a few times in corporate America, women are NOT outdoing us in "these three areas" like you seem to posit... To be fair to OP, women don't have to outdo men to reject 80% men. For example, usually women opt for men who are better than them financially. [Feel free to refute with data] In a world where there are lots of jobs making low wages, and very few jobs where you make high income. [Feel free to refute with data] This leaves us with 80% women earning average wage and 80% men earning average wage. Now these 80% men are not suitable for them and women select for partners who do well financially. I've seen several papers and surveys on this, feel free to refute this with data So, now you've 80% women aiming for 20% men who have plenty of choices and they don't want to commit nor settle. Other than this, education and career has drastically increased the age at which women have kids. Lots of women I know personally want to have kid - but they suffer from fertility issue mostly because most of them are in late 30s. Is this the right are to have kids? Even if it's, their body is not cooperating with them to achieve this goal. Other than this, there is one problem that today it's very easy to leave a relationship or marriage, so most don't dream about future when future can change very fast.
- jawns 6y agoThis doesn't get directly addressed in the article, but the problem goes beyond Americans not making babies. It's also a problem with making families. In 1968, only 7% of parents with a child in the home were unmarried. In 2017, that had risen to 25%. That rise is partly driven by an increase in couples who are cohabiting but unmarried. In 2017, 35% of unmarried parents were cohabiting. But cohabiting relationships tend to be less stable than married relationships. Whereas about 20 percent of parents married at the time of their child's birth have split up five years later, that jumps to nearly 50 percent for parents who were cohabiting but unmarried at the time of their child's birth. There are myriad difficulties associated with the decline of stable marriages among parents. There are economic implications. There are implications for child development and outcomes. There are legal implications, particularly with regard to family courts becoming a party to the relationship. There are tons of policies that influence these trends, but I would argue that paid parental leave, paid medical leave, flexible work schedules, incentives for attending marriage-prep classes and parenting classes, and other social welfare programs have the potential to move the needle. It's unfortunate that we live in a society where families with minor children are one of the most common household types (making up about 40% of all households) and yet our laws and our employer's policies are so anti-family. Sources: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/25/the-changing-prof... https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-kids-parental-cohabitation-and-marriage-are-not-interchangeable https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-kids-parental-cohabitation-an... https://www.statista.com/statistics/242074/percentages-of-us-family-households-with-children-by-type https://www.statista.com/statistics/242074/percentages-of-us...
- mnm1 6y agoMy parents went through hell to make it to America. They wanted their kids to have a better life. If I want the same for my kids, I will have to move to a country that offers a better life for my future children, likely one in western Europe. I won't have kids here. There are solutions to some problems, though they are unlikely to be implemented: universal healthcare, cheap daycare, free university, good education. But culture is unfixable: the anti-intellectualism, entitlement, and superiority complex, helicopter parenting and lack of freedom, lack of community, extreme hate (like racism or misogyny but not limited to those), etc. These two sets of problems make having a child in America a completely unappealing. Even if the former set of issues is solved by making a ton of money (the only current way to solve them on an individual basis), the issue of culture is intractable. Unfortunately, many countries have such intractable cultural issues that makes the idea of raising children there abhorrent. Some make the idea of living there abhorrent.
- pyuser583 6y agoHaving kids generally doesn’t work out in terms of numbers but that’s not the point. It’s more of a deep existential reason, then economic utility.
- throwaway068 6y agoWhat about we simply stop importing cheap things from China? Surely all Americans can't just "learn to code", so would it hurt with some factories building things in America? Is a bit of protectionism that bad?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y agoIf we have Americans making cheap things on American soil for minimum wage... that doesn't change the larger issue at all.
- burlesona 6y agoThere is an obvious short term cause, which is that the US is stuck with pandemic conditions for quite a long time, and pregnancy and delivery is quite a medical thing. The idea of going through that when the local hospital is overwhelmed with coronavirus patients is not appealing. And you don’t know if it will be because you have to forecast 9 to 12 months ahead. Meanwhile we have a housing crisis where even very high income people are having a difficult time finding family sized housing in the places that they work. Having lived in San Francisco for years with children, I would very much like to get a three bedroom two bathroom home, but the cheapest places that are reasonably safe are in the $1.3 million range and up. I don’t want to move to a low cost of living area, I like living in the city. And besides, most of the so-called lower cost of living places aren’t actually that much cheaper. One example: living anywhere near downtown Austin, similar houses have a wider range from as low as 600k (most seem around 800k), but with much higher property taxes the payments are comparable to $1M+ properties in SF. And that’s living in car town without the beauty, walkability, or convenience of an older city. (Once you adjust for the huge pay cut that leaving the Bay Area brings, there aren’t any great options. The “winning” strategy instead is to horde as much savings as you can in the Bay Area then move to a true LCOL location (rural America / rust belt) as a form of early retirement, living mostly off those accumulated savings for the long haul.) But the problems I’m describing, frustrating as they are, are nothing compared to the struggle that a family living with median income is facing. If we don’t get serious about fixing housing, then it won’t surprise me at all if we have a permanent dramatic decrease in birth rates as many adults are not willing to try and raise a family without feeling economically secure, and a lot of people do not feel economically secure until they own their own home.
- yanks215 6y ago> pregnancy and delivery is quite a medical thing. This was historically not the case. There is a movie "The Business of Being Born" which emphasizes midwives in childbirth. It's important to know about this idea before conceiving, because you cannot change your OB after a certain number of weeks, at which point you are on the hospitalization conveyor belt. Caveat emptor, I am a man, and my wife preferred hospitalization, and if you have medical problems it makes sense to be in a hospital. But if you are healthy and young, you have options. Given the pandemic, it could possibly be safer, on balance, to deliver at home or in a non-hospital facility. A migration to this less expensive model would also save money for new families and beds for the critically ill, such as in this pandemic. > Having lived in San Francisco for years with children, I would very much like to get a three bedroom two bathroom home, but the cheapest places that are reasonably safe are in the $1.3 million range and up. I think a lot of people in the upper middle class that read Hacker News are focused on maintaining their status and driving education (and land value increases) from school districts. I myself have made this choice and live in a very high cost suburb with a great school district. But that does not mean these amenities are necessary to have more children. I grew up in a blue collar village and while I graduated college and have some post-graduate coursework, most of my skills have been self-taught. I have often found, albeit anecdotally, that children placed into these districts and affluent situations tend to be less self-reliant and creative than the intelligent peers I grew up with from similar backgrounds. A lot of the worry about educational outcomes is driven by values imparted by strong parenting - my parents did not have much when I was young, but they imparted work ethic and emphasized enrichment outside of the organized classroom. Sometimes I regret moving to my affluent neighborhood because my children will learn less resilience due to less adversity. But I am not moving, so I don't really regret it. My point is that there can be successful Americans from all walks of life and all levels of income due to the meritocratic nature of our nation and strong values in the home and surrounding community. Needing an expensive location with great schools can be helpful but overall is unnecessary. I have friends in a smaller city, one a developer and one a teacher, who own a $190k 4BR house and have safety and good schools. Their child is smart because they spend time and impart values. It is different because tradeoffs are made in potential income and budget decisions. But it is not necessarily harder.
- nxc18 6y agoMassive inflation of health care, education, housing prices isn't helping. I probably won't ever have children due to those factors. (aside: I'm gay and would be adopting anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter, but my straight friends are in the same boat) For people that went the college route (which 95% of the people at my high school did, for context), there was 4-5 years of study during prime child-making, partner-finding years. Now you're 22-23. Then it takes 10 years to pay off the 80k of debt (assuming a comparatively cheap 20k per year) before you can start saving for a house. Maybe you're very wise and are able to pay off your loans two years early. Now you're 30 - 10 years away from the presumed biological clock running out. Next, you've got to save for a house and find a partner. You could argue that renting is fine and you don't need a house, but it seems like home ownership is desirable to create stable conditions for the family. Housing is extremely expensive; a tiny home near me is going for $400,000. It might take another few years to save up a 10% deposit, assuming you're stuck paying potentially extreme rent. Once you've got a house, you've got to be very secure in your career before you can risk having a child; insurance is very expensive. Even with an employer contribution, healthcare for a family likely costs upwards of $1,000/month; that's comparable to rent in many places. On top of all of those structural barriers to parenthood, American society is facing massive uncertainty, deteriorating economic conditions, democracy under serious threat, and ongoing attacks on the environment and institutions that keep people safe and healthy. And finally there's the culture part of it. For the last 30 years, there's been an emphasis on teens never, ever, ever doing anything sexual, because the horror. Then as soon as they turn 18, parents/society are suddenly asking about grandchildren.
- refurb 6y agoIf this was true, lower and middle class people wouldn't be having as many kids as they do. It's obviously possible to have kids without an upper-middle class income. People choose not to have kids because they prioritize other things like education, career, buying a home, living in a HCOL area.
- porkloin 6y agoOne half of a happily childless mid-30s DINK married couple here. We plan to stay that way. If the government wants me to have kids, they had better incentivize it. And when I say incentivize, I don't mean exclusively financial incentives. Ideological ones as well. Right now, the primary reasons for having children are: 1. Personal desire to have children/biological drive to reproduce - so much so that you're willing to shoulder an enormous burden just to have children. 2. Social pressure from family, friends, and society at large - so much so that you're willing to shoulder an enormous burden just to feel like you're making them happy. Sidenote: Folks from camp #2 often seem deeply unhappy. Free universal pre-K childcare would help a lot toward sweetening the pot, as would substantial investment in public school systems. Despite what you may think, this isn't about money or about us being greedy with our time. I don't have a lot of faith in the idea of bringing a human life into the world as it is, but I also want to see evidence from my government that they're building a country worth living in for my future children. Otherwise, why would I bother to subject them to playing a game where the deck is stacked against them? By all accounts, a child of mine would come into the world with their own enormous privilege and advantage over other children (white, born into a higher income family of college graduates, etc.) - but can I really stomach that while knowing it comes at the expense of some other child's opportunity? I felt this way before the pandemic and social unrest of recent months. Now I feel it even more acutely. Personally, I'm completely content with not having kids. But if the government wants me and other people like me to have children, they'd better make the lives of parents easier, lower the barrier to entry, and massively increase my confidence level that this shit-hole country will be worth living in 100 years from now :)
- dctoedt 6y ago> Personally, I'm completely content with not having kids. Sincere question: I wonder how you'll feel in 30 or 40 years. I have an extremely smart, distant-relative-by-marriage who's in his late 60s; he dotes on his two middle-aged nephews and their young families — my speculation is that, as he has developed some health problems, he's come to realize that they're all he has for his old age.
- porkloin 6y ago
- rayiner 6y agoJust as important, people want more kids than they end up having: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp.... Ideal number of children is between 2-3 (average 2.6).
- taylodl 6y agoMy wife sacrificed her career for our 3 kids. When you factor in all the costs of working - the daycare, the work clothes, eating out more frequently, maintaining a "professional" wardrobe and so on and so forth - she was only making a few dollars/hour for all her work, less than minimum wage. Then when you factor in the stress, spending so much time away from your kids, it just doesn't make any sense. She was happy and the kids were happy. Having 3 happy and now successful (my youngest starts college this year) kids is worth far more than whatever other crap I would've spent the money on.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoThat's good for the environment!
- ycombonator 6y agoThe answer was right in front of our eyes. Just needed to look at all the pets and dog poop left on side walks.
- cannabis_sam 6y agoTalk about putting the cart before the horse.. what if Americans are avoiding or postponing having children due to lack of financial prospects? (I’m not American, and generally have a lot more support where I live, but even I am questioning the rationality of having kids in the world we live in.. For me personally, living in the US would mean an automatic no to having kids)
- xellisx 6y agoAs someone with a two year old, we were, and are worried about the society in which our little one will grow up in...