16 ms·

Liberal societies have dangerously low birth rates

66 points by neverminder 6y ago

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Every country on earth (but 2?) have birth rates asymptotically approaching just-under-replacement. This is nothing to do with politics of the sort in the title. It has to do with information and accessibility to birth control.
jppope 6y ago
I've always been curious about why wealthy(ish) individuals in free societies don't want to have (more) children. Theoretically one would expect the opposite. Subjectively, I see individuals that would prefer to go on vacation then have children, but that is a false dichotomy- thinking that having children would reduce your quality of life or your ability to do fun things.
- Grakel 6y ago
  The artificial womb will be the great invention of whatever century. It's not a false dichotomy for women who practically get ripped in half and are never quite the same again, but are expected to stay fit. Of course birth rates go down as women start to get treated like people.
  - raducu 6y ago
    I'm sure that's a minor reason why people don't have kids. The main reasons are economical in nature.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      I always worry about pregnancy if I'd have a kid. Not only could you get a kid with a disability, your SO could be injured or die too. Not to mention post-partum. I knew of a woman whose sister gave birth and something happened where the birth cause a brain hemorrhage in her and she basically became a quadriplegic. Not only is it devastating for everyone involved, but essentially as the father, you're now a caregiver for two people. How the hell would you work a full time job, take care of a newborn AND your now paralyzed SO? Pregnancy is a real scary dice roll that you just hope luck stays on your side all 9 months.
      - raducu 6y ago
        As an anxious person myself, I feel you so much. And I know or heard of people in my immediate circle with serious health issues in children, it's heart breaking. It almost feels like, people in the past just didn't know of all these risks and they just went with the flow, but knowing about all these issues, as an anxious person, certainly doesn't help one bit.
        MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
        Part of me believes that it could've stemmed from people birthing at younger ages though. Since most women appear to be having children at older ages as well as men being older when they finally conceive, that could cause many of the issues as well.
    - lasagnaphil 6y ago
      Mainly economics, although it has some relation to what the parent post is talking about. Unfortunately the sexual revolution happened in the US about the same time when labor unions got fucked, labor power got diminished due to globalization/deindustrialization/automation, and people started be compensated less dollars per productivity. In an ideal world where Keyne's prediction was right, we (both genders) would work only 15 hours a week due to technological advancement and spend the rest on taking care of famliy and community (including special considerations for women on pregnancy), but it seems that these lower-working-hour dreams haven't come true. But then there's an even more insidious cultural part of neoliberalism: for an increasing number of people you're not just supposed to just do your job, you have to indulge in it to prove your self-worth to the boss, you need to advance and maintain your "career", and have to race to the bottom to get a clutch on getting a chance of moving up the social ladder (or else you're going to work at a call center or increasingly precarious part-time gig jobs). Kids are just a liability in this hyper-competitive world; no wonder why women aren't going to have kids, when every aspect of society is telling you (in indirect ways) not to. Agree that the artificial womb is an undererstimated milestone technology that will radically change the world. But such a technological solution isn't a perfect solution for low birth rates if you take care of the fact that you still need to take care of the kids born out of these artificial wombs (even though it could radically improve women's lives).
- kar5pt 6y ago
  >I see individuals that would rather go on vacation then have children, but that is a false dichotomy Why is this a false dichotomy? Clearly having children will use up time and resources that could otherwise be used for vacations and other fun things. I've also heard a theory that in poorer areas, children can become a status marker. So when people see no hope of climbing the socioeconomic latter, they resort to having lots of children to prove their "virility".
  - raducu 6y ago
    It is a false dichotomy because you can go on vacation with your children. But the added cost per child is just soooo much more than any vacation. I'd love to be able to handle a second child. I can comfortably handle the financial aspect, it is the lack of energy, lack of free time and my anxieties that prevent me from taking the plunge.
    - odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
      It depends on what a vacation is for you. If it is visit Paris, sit at and outdoor cafe and see the Louvre. Yeah, kids don't mess with your vacation except perhaps cost. If you want to go to raves until 5 in the morning, do drugs and drink. Yeah, kids are a no no to take. Then there is the in-between, which depends a lot on the type of kid and activity. One week surfing big waves somewhere, maybe possible if your kid has interest and are other smaller waves around. Impossible (or at least non recommended) if kid is afraid of the water and doesn't know how to swim. etc. You can always take them, give them an ipad and let them spend 7 days in front of it, but at that point, why take them? I am divorced but have a kid. Vacations (travelling) are usually split in two (or three). One week with my kid at someplace that is mostly for him (beachs + waterparks + etc). A week with my gf (which can be a mix of things) and then a week for myself (usually snowboarding or surfing somewhere by myself or a group of friends). But I can do this because I am divorced, and I don't have him 100% of the time with me. If I had, I could say goodbye to 'my' week (like I did while I was married).
      - raducu 6y ago
- steveBK123 6y ago
  From a status perspective, the wealthier you are the more time & money it costs to have&raise children. Housing, childcare, education, etc... basically all the things that have gone up at a much higher clip than official CPI inflation calculations. Being a wealthy person in liberal western society you are likely to live in a high cost urban setting. Some real NYC numbers that I am sure SF is similar for. * Housing No kids? Rent a decent 1BR place for $3-4k/mo in any neighborhood you want. 1-2 Kids you can squeeze into a 2BR? Rent is now $6k (2-3 kids / need a 3BR make that 10k), and you are now limited to neighborhoods that are zoned for "good schools". * Childcare? $2k/mo per kid * Education? If your kid doesn't get tracked the way you want / you aren't zoned in the right catchment area / you have bought into the arms race - private school is $4k/mo per kid So 0->1 kid is +$5-9k/mo 0->2 kids is +$7-15k/mo 0->3 kids is +$13-25k/mo These are post-tax numbers so 1st kid requires +$100k of income and at the high end the 3 kids could mean needing +$500k income. There are a lot of great cities you could cut these numbers in half, or in a quarter, but scale should be fairly similar. Without immigration & some more conservative families, we'd probably see the same population aging/declines of Western Europe and Japan/Taiwan/Korea.
  - ac29 6y ago
    What you're describing is basically the top 1% of US households, which starts around $500k/yr income. Even in NY or SF, very very few people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on childcare and private schooling. I'd agree there is a status/social signalling element to it - I suspect if these households didn't have children, many of them would just spend their wealth on expensive cars, clothes, vacations, or other similar luxuries.
    - steveBK123 6y ago
      Housing, childcare and education are three of the highest inflation categories outside of medical care. The more kids you have, the more of each you need, and the costs are basically linear. Outside the 1% the numbers are lower, but it's obviously much harder when expressed as percentage of income. 2 interesting links: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/20/income-it-takes-to-be-considered-rich-in-every-state/114967522/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/20/income-it-ta... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-costs-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-... "The average cost of providing center-based care for an infant in the U.S. is $1,230 per month. " So on AVERAGE, having 2 kids in daycare is $30k/year nationally. For most anyone, anywhere, $30k/year is a lot of money. Benchmarking "average 2 kids childcare cost" in state against "top 20% income after tax" in state: Nebraska 30% Connecticut 26% Pennsylvania 25% Virginia 25% Arizona 23% New Mexico 20% And again this is average childcare cost vs richest 20% (who may likely spend more than average). People lowering down the bracket closer to average income also need childcare, which is going to consume a higher percent of income. Sometimes this means one spouse exists the workforce involuntarily to do childcare as the cost of daycare exceeds the lower paid spouses income. Other times it means less formal forms of childcare with the associated costs/risks implied. Some happily choose to be a full-time parent, and the money does not factor in.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Look at tourist hotspots and how people behave there. A lot of people on their holidays want to drink, stay out until the wee hours of the morning, perhaps use soft drugs, etc. These are perfectly ordinary things to do on holiday, but add a child to the mix and society becomes quite disapproving. Of course children mean, for a subset of holidaymakers, no chance to do what they consider "fun things".
  - kbelder 6y ago
    Not disagreeing, but the converse is that there's a large subset of people who feel that playing ball with a kid in a backyard, or helping a kid learn long division, is a lot more fun than partying and smoking pot. Those are the ones that are still having children. Biologically, if a smaller subset of a species is reproducing, it's going to accelerate evolutionary pressures. Memetically, there may be a parallel cultural effect.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      In recent years, there have been a lot of articles that aim to remove the stigma around regretting one's children. Women feel pressured to pretend that they love their children so much and think life is better with them, even when deep inside they wish they had never had them. So, even if that subset of people ends up having kids, it doesn’t necessarily mean evolutionary pressure towards people actually liking those kids and the activities done with them, and the subsequent generation may end up being anti-natalist regardless.
    - watwut 6y ago
      > but the converse is that there's a large subset of people who feel that playing ball with a kid in a backyard, or helping a kid learn long division, is a lot more fun than partying and smoking pot. No, honestly there is not. Even including people who don't party hard and never take drugs. Kids can be rewarding in their own way, but help with homework nor backyard ball kicking with small child are not those rewarding moments if you do them regularly. They can be fun if you engage with kid once in few months, then it is pleasant change. But regularly, not so much.
aussiegreenie 6y ago
Educated people have low birth rates. China and Russia are not Liberal states and their birth rates are very low as well. Covid-19 has caused millions of births to be avoided and birth rates have fallen out of bed. Demographers are constantly lowering their population projections and are still vastly overestimating the 2050 population.
- monocasa 6y ago
  I think it's more access to quality healthcare. No longer do you have to have as many kids as possible to be sure you'll get over the hill of the childhood mortality rate. Our healthcare system has made losing a child closer to losing a spouse rather than a simple fact of life like it once was. Education is just a proxy for access to services like that.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    This doesn't explain why so many skip kids entirely.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      They never wanted them and they have access to safe and effective birth control and abortions.
      - bluefirebrand 6y ago
        Okay but why did they never want them? There has to be some kind of underlying reason why humans are going against what we would expect our biology to want, which is to reproduce.
        monocasa 6y ago
        Because our biology relied on us wanting sex, and having no mechanism to stop kids from being produced from sex? Whether you want kids or not didn't really factor into it for the vast length of human existence.
ku-man 6y ago
Can someone enlighten me and list the benefits of over-population? Low birth rates in Norway or the Congo are a net gain, they cannot be 'dangerous'. Unless, of course, you are a nationalist, racist or religious nuts.
5tefan 6y ago
I think liberal is rather a label, a brand to have something to be proud of. Actually our societies are very opressive. We have to function as expected at all times. As a parent I can tell you this is impossible. Toiling along and working through live and spending money on meaningless stuff is the new meaning of life. There's precious few headroom to have children. You can't have them or can't afford them.
- unknown_apostle 6y ago
  It's also an expression of choice and priorities. Every child is a new person that really exists, that can experience the world and continue to live forever in the love of God.
  - JetAlone 6y ago
    Amen.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    This sounds like a reason for people to have as many children as possible, which is also unsustainable.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  If you think this is oppressive, you ought to try living in a society that's actually oppressive. > We have to function as expected at all times. No, we don't. (I mean, yes, we do to the degree necessary to keep a job and not get arrested. Other than that, though, no.) Nothing is forcing you to "function as expected at all times" except your bowing to others' expectations for you. > Toiling along and working through live and spending money on meaningless stuff is the new meaning of life. Only if you make it so. As it sounds like you have figured out, there's no actual meaning there. Don't keep chasing down that dead end; you won't find anything there.
  - 5tefan 6y ago
    That misses the point. Someone being off worse doesn't mean I am fine. Being comparably fine doesn't mean I have to sit in silence and wait until it is bad enough so that I am allowed to say something. I absolutely agree that others are off way worse than I am. I figured it out. But it doesn't help. Economically I am forced to function. No work no money. I need a certain amount of money to sustain a reasonable level of family life. I like it simple. But still - I must function. I love being a dad.
Barrin92 6y ago
There's a lot of high minded philosophizing in the piece including the notion that not having children is some kind of subconscious death wish of liberal modernity, but I want to propose a much simpler answer, what if people have fewer children simply because they want to, with no deep sinister ideological underpinning? It's not like people in impoverished nations have half a dozen children because of some deep intrinsic philosophical vitality, they have that many children because family is both social security and primary source of labour. In 'liberal' societies, but more accurately to say is developed societies (because the trend is the same in Japan and China etc), investing more resources in fewer kids is what pays off, and all material reasons aside grants more freedom to women in particular. The whole tone of discussions about low birth rates always contains this implicit assumption that there's anything wrong with it. My spouse and I also don't want kids, and it's not because we're doing coke every weekend and can't wait to die, it's because we never felt like we wanted kids, and only in recent times do people actually have the kind of liberty to live that way.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  > what if people have fewer children simply because they want to > The whole tone of discussions about low birth rates always contains this implicit assumption that there's anything wrong with it First, only certain societies have only recently arrived at a value that there is nothing wrong with having more kids. Traditionally, having babies and raising them was considered to be of utmost importance. Second, it still is of utmost importance given how our societies are structured. You want to work until your 60's, then retire and live until mid-80's? Fine. But who is going to work/pay for your food, entertainment, healthcare, security and general societal infrastructure? All those things need humans which you are not going to raise. So "developed" societies seem to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with not having babies, while at the same time utterly reliant on "underdeveloped" societies to import people from. > investing more resources in fewer kids is what pays off How do you plan to balance Social Security and budget with fewer people working?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I think the most straight-forward answer is that the working age needs to be raised, budgets need to be balanced, people need to be self-reliant and responsible for their own future, and if all else fails we have a safety net. I don't actually think that retiring at 60 is reasonable in a society like this, but I also don't think this is a huge problem because many people don't want to retire that early, myself included. In a society with fewer kids we'll need to plan ahead more, but we also are much more productive, so I don't see this as a problem, and most importantly not in conflict with liberalism. Subjecting personal choice about how many kids to have to welfare debates or population planning to me is the opposite of liberalism if anything.
deleted 6y ago
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rayiner 6y ago
Socially liberal societies, in their current form, are literally not sustainable. And what sustainability they appear to have is actually propped up by socially conservative natives, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democrats-lot-183722934.html,[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democra... and immigrants from socially conservative countries. This isn’t related to modern society, necessarily. The US total fertility rate was well over 3.0 in the 1960s, but even then most women worked outside the home. It’s also not necessarily preference. The average number of children women say they want is 2.7, while the fertility rate is now well under 2.0. I strongly suspect it’s the result of the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families. [1] This is actually a fairly new phenomenon, appearing in the last few decades.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families. I'm sure the government assistance rules that discourage marriage (i.e. the several thousand year old stable child raising family unit) aren't stalling that trend.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Marriage as we know it probably formed to fit the needs of an agricultural society. We aren’t that any more. For hundreds of millennia before that, humans lived in small tribes, and that was natural for that environment. I don’t know yet what our post-agricultural living arrangements will turn out to be, but it might not be the nuclear family.
- wetmore 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so quick to blame the sexual revolution. There are many other relevant factors that have changed since the 60s, such as the cost of owning a home and raising kids. People are less likely to have nearby family to share childrearing responsibilities, and so on. It's likely a confluence of factors.
  - 6y ago
twiddling 6y ago
2019 article btw
notmenope 6y ago
Liberal societies place a stigma of having children instead of chasing middle managment careers and encourge whores to kill their babies. QED.
anemoiac 6y ago
Plenty of discussion here about the consequences of shrinking populations (given contemporary societal paradigms), but I don’t see any discussion regarding the consequences of growing (or even static) populations amidst increasing global development (I.e. resource use). Changing tax policies, benefits, and social norms seems more feasible than conjuring resources out of thin air, no? At “Western” levels of consumption, what percentage of the current global population is sustainable?
- fogihujy 6y ago
  It's difficult to answer that as things are ever changing, ever improving, but it's probably less than half of the current global population. At the present, the press is usually talking about all of Earth's resources being used up around August each year. If everyone used the same amount of resources as the top 10% percent we'd probably end up with that point being passed much earlier.
sjg007 6y ago
It's because of housing costs, urbanization and the lack of affordable childcare. In 1900 the average number of kids per family was 3.5 down from 7 in the 1800s. Now we are at 2.5 I think. If you had/have a 40 acre farm you could afford to have 7 kids. You also might have started early. If you live in a multi-generational family you'd have had help. In a 7 kid family some of the older kids are helping raise the younger ones. Gone are the days of the village. We need a cultural change to support a higher fertility rate with broad government economic support. I don't think America has political will to do that. This country is run by rich white millionaires. Maybe when they die off. It's been hard enough to develop universal preK and daycare programs.
airhead969 6y ago
Pay people to have kids. https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate Also, facilitate dating, sex, cohabitation, and civil unions, or it won't happen as much.
- ido 6y ago
  Everything listed in that article is less generous than what Germany already offers parents and yet birth rates here are still among the lowest in the world.
godmode2019 6y ago
I don't know why this is so complicated, its birth control and abortion. People typically don't plan kids, they just happen every 3 or 4 years. Woman now have the choice to delay child birth as long as they want. The average in my country is 30 years ago. In the past a woman would have already been on children number 2 or three by this point. Having a child at 40 while possible its a lot harder than 20. So you have less child bearing years remaining. This explains everything, educated people are more likely to make sound financial choices and delay their first child. Also houses security and finance security is a large factor in abortion in my country and Korea a well studied for their low birth rate. Their are more abortions than births in my country. I'm not making a political statement its just the situation we live in where you need two incomes just to be lower middle class. Interestingly Chinese in my country have the most abortions followed by Indians. This is probably due to cultural reasons and not wanting to be disowned by ones parents for 'Throwing your life away'.
- boxed 6y ago
  > I don't know why this is so complicated, its birth control and abortion. OK. But then: > need two incomes just to be middle class Maybe it's not as simple as just abortions and birth control then? Look at Sweden btw. We have over 2.0. How? Probably because the state makes it possi le to have children, instead of impossible.
intricatedetail 6y ago
High taxes mean people are unable to save enough money to provide a foundation for children - to provide them with better life they had. Only motivator some countries give is child benefit, but that's only an incentive for people to whom it is a lot of money.
- a0-prw 6y ago
  No way. Denmark has high taxes which finance free education, free healthcare and "child money" which every mother gets. Remove those benefits and it would be much harder economically to raise children to the same standard of care.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    But you'll never get wealthy out of your hard work. I don't know about Denmark but in the UK we also have "free" healthcare but in reality you still have to go private to get cared for. People don't want mediocre lives for their children.
    - a0-prw 6y ago
      We don't generally work that hard in Denmark, tbh. I lived in the UK in the late 80s and it was much harder than DK, like fight-to-survive harder. And I've also lived in a country which was even more extreme. Seriously, a benevolent social security system makes sense
      - intricatedetail 6y ago
        Maybe to you, but this is just life to safely meet death, with knowledge you children will have the same fate. Then you realise you'll become like a farm animal under such system.
        a0-prw 6y ago
        I absolutely don't live life to meet death safely. On the contrary, in the knowledge that my family will be well cared for (to a large extent), I am free to use my spare cash on stuff I think is fun.
hannofcart 6y ago
I think it just boils down to cost-benefit analysis in most cases. My wife and I are happily married and decidedly childless. Why is it not justified for me to ask what I get out of the massive investment that goes into having kids? I don't see kids being able to support my wife and myself when we are old or even being around physically for any kind of help whatsoever. I am hardly able to do any of that for my own parents. I don't even think it makes any sense for me to have such expectations of such payback. We are told that we are missing out a deep satisfaction that supposedly comes from raising kids. I don't doubt this. However, all the costs that are associated with the pursuit of that intangible feeling seem to be very high. In my country, public education infrastructure is a sham. Cost of sending a kid to a private primary school these days will set me back by around a fifth of my salary for a mediocre one. And I am definitely in the top 10 percentile in terms of purchasing power in my country. It's quite bewildering to see some of my colleagues opt in to raising two kids and a mortgage despite that leaving them without any extra income whatsoever. They are typically 1 firing away from complete bankruptcy. I try hard not to scoff at them when they tell us we should try having kids all the while juggling desperately to make ends meet. Honestly, I consider people who choose to have kids despite not having the financial wherewithal to ensure a wholesome upbringing for them quite irresponsible bordering on immoral. It's ok to gamble with one's own life but making that choice for another human being you choose to bring in to the world is quite reprehensible IMO.
helen___keller 6y ago
The hand wringing over birthrates is ridiculous. Until we colonize the stars, it is impossible that human population could grow exponentially forever; birthrate decline HAD to happen sooner or later. If we have reason to believe that continued population decline could lead to the collapse of civilization, certainly hand wringing is warranted. Such a collapse currently would require blindly extrapolating current social trends on the order of centuries, which is a fool's errand.
m0llusk 6y ago
Liberal societies have baby booms after wars so we should have another war. This modern logic stuff is absolutely brilliant!
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
(2019)

66 points by neverminder 6y ago

Every country on earth (but 2?) have birth rates asymptotically approaching just-under-replacement. This is nothing to do with politics of the sort in the title. It has to do with information and accessibility to birth control.

jppope 6y ago

I've always been curious about why wealthy(ish) individuals in free societies don't want to have (more) children. Theoretically one would expect the opposite. Subjectively, I see individuals that would prefer to go on vacation then have children, but that is a false dichotomy- thinking that having children would reduce your quality of life or your ability to do fun things.

Grakel 6y ago
The artificial womb will be the great invention of whatever century. It's not a false dichotomy for women who practically get ripped in half and are never quite the same again, but are expected to stay fit. Of course birth rates go down as women start to get treated like people.
- raducu 6y ago
  I'm sure that's a minor reason why people don't have kids. The main reasons are economical in nature.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    I always worry about pregnancy if I'd have a kid. Not only could you get a kid with a disability, your SO could be injured or die too. Not to mention post-partum. I knew of a woman whose sister gave birth and something happened where the birth cause a brain hemorrhage in her and she basically became a quadriplegic. Not only is it devastating for everyone involved, but essentially as the father, you're now a caregiver for two people. How the hell would you work a full time job, take care of a newborn AND your now paralyzed SO? Pregnancy is a real scary dice roll that you just hope luck stays on your side all 9 months.
    - raducu 6y ago
      As an anxious person myself, I feel you so much. And I know or heard of people in my immediate circle with serious health issues in children, it's heart breaking. It almost feels like, people in the past just didn't know of all these risks and they just went with the flow, but knowing about all these issues, as an anxious person, certainly doesn't help one bit.
      - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
        Part of me believes that it could've stemmed from people birthing at younger ages though. Since most women appear to be having children at older ages as well as men being older when they finally conceive, that could cause many of the issues as well.
  - lasagnaphil 6y ago
    Mainly economics, although it has some relation to what the parent post is talking about. Unfortunately the sexual revolution happened in the US about the same time when labor unions got fucked, labor power got diminished due to globalization/deindustrialization/automation, and people started be compensated less dollars per productivity. In an ideal world where Keyne's prediction was right, we (both genders) would work only 15 hours a week due to technological advancement and spend the rest on taking care of famliy and community (including special considerations for women on pregnancy), but it seems that these lower-working-hour dreams haven't come true. But then there's an even more insidious cultural part of neoliberalism: for an increasing number of people you're not just supposed to just do your job, you have to indulge in it to prove your self-worth to the boss, you need to advance and maintain your "career", and have to race to the bottom to get a clutch on getting a chance of moving up the social ladder (or else you're going to work at a call center or increasingly precarious part-time gig jobs). Kids are just a liability in this hyper-competitive world; no wonder why women aren't going to have kids, when every aspect of society is telling you (in indirect ways) not to. Agree that the artificial womb is an undererstimated milestone technology that will radically change the world. But such a technological solution isn't a perfect solution for low birth rates if you take care of the fact that you still need to take care of the kids born out of these artificial wombs (even though it could radically improve women's lives).
kar5pt 6y ago
>I see individuals that would rather go on vacation then have children, but that is a false dichotomy Why is this a false dichotomy? Clearly having children will use up time and resources that could otherwise be used for vacations and other fun things. I've also heard a theory that in poorer areas, children can become a status marker. So when people see no hope of climbing the socioeconomic latter, they resort to having lots of children to prove their "virility".
- raducu 6y ago
  It is a false dichotomy because you can go on vacation with your children. But the added cost per child is just soooo much more than any vacation. I'd love to be able to handle a second child. I can comfortably handle the financial aspect, it is the lack of energy, lack of free time and my anxieties that prevent me from taking the plunge.
  - odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
    It depends on what a vacation is for you. If it is visit Paris, sit at and outdoor cafe and see the Louvre. Yeah, kids don't mess with your vacation except perhaps cost. If you want to go to raves until 5 in the morning, do drugs and drink. Yeah, kids are a no no to take. Then there is the in-between, which depends a lot on the type of kid and activity. One week surfing big waves somewhere, maybe possible if your kid has interest and are other smaller waves around. Impossible (or at least non recommended) if kid is afraid of the water and doesn't know how to swim. etc. You can always take them, give them an ipad and let them spend 7 days in front of it, but at that point, why take them? I am divorced but have a kid. Vacations (travelling) are usually split in two (or three). One week with my kid at someplace that is mostly for him (beachs + waterparks + etc). A week with my gf (which can be a mix of things) and then a week for myself (usually snowboarding or surfing somewhere by myself or a group of friends). But I can do this because I am divorced, and I don't have him 100% of the time with me. If I had, I could say goodbye to 'my' week (like I did while I was married).
    - raducu 6y ago
steveBK123 6y ago
From a status perspective, the wealthier you are the more time & money it costs to have&raise children. Housing, childcare, education, etc... basically all the things that have gone up at a much higher clip than official CPI inflation calculations. Being a wealthy person in liberal western society you are likely to live in a high cost urban setting. Some real NYC numbers that I am sure SF is similar for. * Housing No kids? Rent a decent 1BR place for $3-4k/mo in any neighborhood you want. 1-2 Kids you can squeeze into a 2BR? Rent is now $6k (2-3 kids / need a 3BR make that 10k), and you are now limited to neighborhoods that are zoned for "good schools". * Childcare? $2k/mo per kid * Education? If your kid doesn't get tracked the way you want / you aren't zoned in the right catchment area / you have bought into the arms race - private school is $4k/mo per kid So 0->1 kid is +$5-9k/mo 0->2 kids is +$7-15k/mo 0->3 kids is +$13-25k/mo These are post-tax numbers so 1st kid requires +$100k of income and at the high end the 3 kids could mean needing +$500k income. There are a lot of great cities you could cut these numbers in half, or in a quarter, but scale should be fairly similar. Without immigration & some more conservative families, we'd probably see the same population aging/declines of Western Europe and Japan/Taiwan/Korea.
- ac29 6y ago
  What you're describing is basically the top 1% of US households, which starts around $500k/yr income. Even in NY or SF, very very few people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on childcare and private schooling. I'd agree there is a status/social signalling element to it - I suspect if these households didn't have children, many of them would just spend their wealth on expensive cars, clothes, vacations, or other similar luxuries.
  - steveBK123 6y ago
    Housing, childcare and education are three of the highest inflation categories outside of medical care. The more kids you have, the more of each you need, and the costs are basically linear. Outside the 1% the numbers are lower, but it's obviously much harder when expressed as percentage of income. 2 interesting links: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/20/income-it-takes-to-be-considered-rich-in-every-state/114967522/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/20/income-it-ta... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-costs-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-... "The average cost of providing center-based care for an infant in the U.S. is $1,230 per month. " So on AVERAGE, having 2 kids in daycare is $30k/year nationally. For most anyone, anywhere, $30k/year is a lot of money. Benchmarking "average 2 kids childcare cost" in state against "top 20% income after tax" in state: Nebraska 30% Connecticut 26% Pennsylvania 25% Virginia 25% Arizona 23% New Mexico 20% And again this is average childcare cost vs richest 20% (who may likely spend more than average). People lowering down the bracket closer to average income also need childcare, which is going to consume a higher percent of income. Sometimes this means one spouse exists the workforce involuntarily to do childcare as the cost of daycare exceeds the lower paid spouses income. Other times it means less formal forms of childcare with the associated costs/risks implied. Some happily choose to be a full-time parent, and the money does not factor in.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Look at tourist hotspots and how people behave there. A lot of people on their holidays want to drink, stay out until the wee hours of the morning, perhaps use soft drugs, etc. These are perfectly ordinary things to do on holiday, but add a child to the mix and society becomes quite disapproving. Of course children mean, for a subset of holidaymakers, no chance to do what they consider "fun things".
- kbelder 6y ago
  Not disagreeing, but the converse is that there's a large subset of people who feel that playing ball with a kid in a backyard, or helping a kid learn long division, is a lot more fun than partying and smoking pot. Those are the ones that are still having children. Biologically, if a smaller subset of a species is reproducing, it's going to accelerate evolutionary pressures. Memetically, there may be a parallel cultural effect.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    In recent years, there have been a lot of articles that aim to remove the stigma around regretting one's children. Women feel pressured to pretend that they love their children so much and think life is better with them, even when deep inside they wish they had never had them. So, even if that subset of people ends up having kids, it doesn’t necessarily mean evolutionary pressure towards people actually liking those kids and the activities done with them, and the subsequent generation may end up being anti-natalist regardless.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > but the converse is that there's a large subset of people who feel that playing ball with a kid in a backyard, or helping a kid learn long division, is a lot more fun than partying and smoking pot. No, honestly there is not. Even including people who don't party hard and never take drugs. Kids can be rewarding in their own way, but help with homework nor backyard ball kicking with small child are not those rewarding moments if you do them regularly. They can be fun if you engage with kid once in few months, then it is pleasant change. But regularly, not so much.

aussiegreenie 6y ago

Educated people have low birth rates. China and Russia are not Liberal states and their birth rates are very low as well. Covid-19 has caused millions of births to be avoided and birth rates have fallen out of bed. Demographers are constantly lowering their population projections and are still vastly overestimating the 2050 population.

monocasa 6y ago
I think it's more access to quality healthcare. No longer do you have to have as many kids as possible to be sure you'll get over the hill of the childhood mortality rate. Our healthcare system has made losing a child closer to losing a spouse rather than a simple fact of life like it once was. Education is just a proxy for access to services like that.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  This doesn't explain why so many skip kids entirely.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    They never wanted them and they have access to safe and effective birth control and abortions.
    - bluefirebrand 6y ago
      Okay but why did they never want them? There has to be some kind of underlying reason why humans are going against what we would expect our biology to want, which is to reproduce.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        Because our biology relied on us wanting sex, and having no mechanism to stop kids from being produced from sex? Whether you want kids or not didn't really factor into it for the vast length of human existence.

ku-man 6y ago

Can someone enlighten me and list the benefits of over-population? Low birth rates in Norway or the Congo are a net gain, they cannot be 'dangerous'. Unless, of course, you are a nationalist, racist or religious nuts.

5tefan 6y ago

I think liberal is rather a label, a brand to have something to be proud of. Actually our societies are very opressive. We have to function as expected at all times. As a parent I can tell you this is impossible. Toiling along and working through live and spending money on meaningless stuff is the new meaning of life. There's precious few headroom to have children. You can't have them or can't afford them.

unknown_apostle 6y ago
It's also an expression of choice and priorities. Every child is a new person that really exists, that can experience the world and continue to live forever in the love of God.
- JetAlone 6y ago
  Amen.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  This sounds like a reason for people to have as many children as possible, which is also unsustainable.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
If you think this is oppressive, you ought to try living in a society that's actually oppressive. > We have to function as expected at all times. No, we don't. (I mean, yes, we do to the degree necessary to keep a job and not get arrested. Other than that, though, no.) Nothing is forcing you to "function as expected at all times" except your bowing to others' expectations for you. > Toiling along and working through live and spending money on meaningless stuff is the new meaning of life. Only if you make it so. As it sounds like you have figured out, there's no actual meaning there. Don't keep chasing down that dead end; you won't find anything there.
- 5tefan 6y ago
  That misses the point. Someone being off worse doesn't mean I am fine. Being comparably fine doesn't mean I have to sit in silence and wait until it is bad enough so that I am allowed to say something. I absolutely agree that others are off way worse than I am. I figured it out. But it doesn't help. Economically I am forced to function. No work no money. I need a certain amount of money to sustain a reasonable level of family life. I like it simple. But still - I must function. I love being a dad.

Barrin92 6y ago

There's a lot of high minded philosophizing in the piece including the notion that not having children is some kind of subconscious death wish of liberal modernity, but I want to propose a much simpler answer, what if people have fewer children simply because they want to, with no deep sinister ideological underpinning? It's not like people in impoverished nations have half a dozen children because of some deep intrinsic philosophical vitality, they have that many children because family is both social security and primary source of labour. In 'liberal' societies, but more accurately to say is developed societies (because the trend is the same in Japan and China etc), investing more resources in fewer kids is what pays off, and all material reasons aside grants more freedom to women in particular. The whole tone of discussions about low birth rates always contains this implicit assumption that there's anything wrong with it. My spouse and I also don't want kids, and it's not because we're doing coke every weekend and can't wait to die, it's because we never felt like we wanted kids, and only in recent times do people actually have the kind of liberty to live that way.

RestlessMind 6y ago
> what if people have fewer children simply because they want to > The whole tone of discussions about low birth rates always contains this implicit assumption that there's anything wrong with it First, only certain societies have only recently arrived at a value that there is nothing wrong with having more kids. Traditionally, having babies and raising them was considered to be of utmost importance. Second, it still is of utmost importance given how our societies are structured. You want to work until your 60's, then retire and live until mid-80's? Fine. But who is going to work/pay for your food, entertainment, healthcare, security and general societal infrastructure? All those things need humans which you are not going to raise. So "developed" societies seem to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with not having babies, while at the same time utterly reliant on "underdeveloped" societies to import people from. > investing more resources in fewer kids is what pays off How do you plan to balance Social Security and budget with fewer people working?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I think the most straight-forward answer is that the working age needs to be raised, budgets need to be balanced, people need to be self-reliant and responsible for their own future, and if all else fails we have a safety net. I don't actually think that retiring at 60 is reasonable in a society like this, but I also don't think this is a huge problem because many people don't want to retire that early, myself included. In a society with fewer kids we'll need to plan ahead more, but we also are much more productive, so I don't see this as a problem, and most importantly not in conflict with liberalism. Subjecting personal choice about how many kids to have to welfare debates or population planning to me is the opposite of liberalism if anything.

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rayiner 6y ago

Socially liberal societies, in their current form, are literally not sustainable. And what sustainability they appear to have is actually propped up by socially conservative natives, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democrats-lot-183722934.html,[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democra... and immigrants from socially conservative countries. This isn’t related to modern society, necessarily. The US total fertility rate was well over 3.0 in the 1960s, but even then most women worked outside the home. It’s also not necessarily preference. The average number of children women say they want is 2.7, while the fertility rate is now well under 2.0. I strongly suspect it’s the result of the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families. [1] This is actually a fairly new phenomenon, appearing in the last few decades.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families. I'm sure the government assistance rules that discourage marriage (i.e. the several thousand year old stable child raising family unit) aren't stalling that trend.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Marriage as we know it probably formed to fit the needs of an agricultural society. We aren’t that any more. For hundreds of millennia before that, humans lived in small tribes, and that was natural for that environment. I don’t know yet what our post-agricultural living arrangements will turn out to be, but it might not be the nuclear family.
wetmore 6y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the sexual revolution. There are many other relevant factors that have changed since the 60s, such as the cost of owning a home and raising kids. People are less likely to have nearby family to share childrearing responsibilities, and so on. It's likely a confluence of factors.
- 6y ago

twiddling 6y ago

2019 article btw

notmenope 6y ago

Liberal societies place a stigma of having children instead of chasing middle managment careers and encourge whores to kill their babies. QED.

anemoiac 6y ago

Plenty of discussion here about the consequences of shrinking populations (given contemporary societal paradigms), but I don’t see any discussion regarding the consequences of growing (or even static) populations amidst increasing global development (I.e. resource use). Changing tax policies, benefits, and social norms seems more feasible than conjuring resources out of thin air, no? At “Western” levels of consumption, what percentage of the current global population is sustainable?

fogihujy 6y ago
It's difficult to answer that as things are ever changing, ever improving, but it's probably less than half of the current global population. At the present, the press is usually talking about all of Earth's resources being used up around August each year. If everyone used the same amount of resources as the top 10% percent we'd probably end up with that point being passed much earlier.

sjg007 6y ago

It's because of housing costs, urbanization and the lack of affordable childcare. In 1900 the average number of kids per family was 3.5 down from 7 in the 1800s. Now we are at 2.5 I think. If you had/have a 40 acre farm you could afford to have 7 kids. You also might have started early. If you live in a multi-generational family you'd have had help. In a 7 kid family some of the older kids are helping raise the younger ones. Gone are the days of the village. We need a cultural change to support a higher fertility rate with broad government economic support. I don't think America has political will to do that. This country is run by rich white millionaires. Maybe when they die off. It's been hard enough to develop universal preK and daycare programs.

airhead969 6y ago

Pay people to have kids. https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate Also, facilitate dating, sex, cohabitation, and civil unions, or it won't happen as much.

ido 6y ago
Everything listed in that article is less generous than what Germany already offers parents and yet birth rates here are still among the lowest in the world.

godmode2019 6y ago

I don't know why this is so complicated, its birth control and abortion. People typically don't plan kids, they just happen every 3 or 4 years. Woman now have the choice to delay child birth as long as they want. The average in my country is 30 years ago. In the past a woman would have already been on children number 2 or three by this point. Having a child at 40 while possible its a lot harder than 20. So you have less child bearing years remaining. This explains everything, educated people are more likely to make sound financial choices and delay their first child. Also houses security and finance security is a large factor in abortion in my country and Korea a well studied for their low birth rate. Their are more abortions than births in my country. I'm not making a political statement its just the situation we live in where you need two incomes just to be lower middle class. Interestingly Chinese in my country have the most abortions followed by Indians. This is probably due to cultural reasons and not wanting to be disowned by ones parents for 'Throwing your life away'.

boxed 6y ago
> I don't know why this is so complicated, its birth control and abortion. OK. But then: > need two incomes just to be middle class Maybe it's not as simple as just abortions and birth control then? Look at Sweden btw. We have over 2.0. How? Probably because the state makes it possi le to have children, instead of impossible.

intricatedetail 6y ago

High taxes mean people are unable to save enough money to provide a foundation for children - to provide them with better life they had. Only motivator some countries give is child benefit, but that's only an incentive for people to whom it is a lot of money.

a0-prw 6y ago
No way. Denmark has high taxes which finance free education, free healthcare and "child money" which every mother gets. Remove those benefits and it would be much harder economically to raise children to the same standard of care.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  But you'll never get wealthy out of your hard work. I don't know about Denmark but in the UK we also have "free" healthcare but in reality you still have to go private to get cared for. People don't want mediocre lives for their children.
  - a0-prw 6y ago
    We don't generally work that hard in Denmark, tbh. I lived in the UK in the late 80s and it was much harder than DK, like fight-to-survive harder. And I've also lived in a country which was even more extreme. Seriously, a benevolent social security system makes sense
    - intricatedetail 6y ago
      Maybe to you, but this is just life to safely meet death, with knowledge you children will have the same fate. Then you realise you'll become like a farm animal under such system.
      - a0-prw 6y ago
        I absolutely don't live life to meet death safely. On the contrary, in the knowledge that my family will be well cared for (to a large extent), I am free to use my spare cash on stuff I think is fun.

hannofcart 6y ago

I think it just boils down to cost-benefit analysis in most cases. My wife and I are happily married and decidedly childless. Why is it not justified for me to ask what I get out of the massive investment that goes into having kids? I don't see kids being able to support my wife and myself when we are old or even being around physically for any kind of help whatsoever. I am hardly able to do any of that for my own parents. I don't even think it makes any sense for me to have such expectations of such payback. We are told that we are missing out a deep satisfaction that supposedly comes from raising kids. I don't doubt this. However, all the costs that are associated with the pursuit of that intangible feeling seem to be very high. In my country, public education infrastructure is a sham. Cost of sending a kid to a private primary school these days will set me back by around a fifth of my salary for a mediocre one. And I am definitely in the top 10 percentile in terms of purchasing power in my country. It's quite bewildering to see some of my colleagues opt in to raising two kids and a mortgage despite that leaving them without any extra income whatsoever. They are typically 1 firing away from complete bankruptcy. I try hard not to scoff at them when they tell us we should try having kids all the while juggling desperately to make ends meet. Honestly, I consider people who choose to have kids despite not having the financial wherewithal to ensure a wholesome upbringing for them quite irresponsible bordering on immoral. It's ok to gamble with one's own life but making that choice for another human being you choose to bring in to the world is quite reprehensible IMO.

helen___keller 6y ago

The hand wringing over birthrates is ridiculous. Until we colonize the stars, it is impossible that human population could grow exponentially forever; birthrate decline HAD to happen sooner or later. If we have reason to believe that continued population decline could lead to the collapse of civilization, certainly hand wringing is warranted. Such a collapse currently would require blindly extrapolating current social trends on the order of centuries, which is a fool's errand.

m0llusk 6y ago

Liberal societies have baby booms after wars so we should have another war. This modern logic stuff is absolutely brilliant!

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

(2019)