4 ms·

Regardless of spins of pundits, most scientific analysis agree: its due to career demands outweighing everything in ones twenties and traditional support nets n

by brnt 6y ago

Regardless of spins of pundits, most scientific analysis agree: its due to career demands outweighing everything in ones twenties and traditional support nets not sufficiently being compensated for with alternative support. Altought a career is a way to self deploy and actualise, and as such is great that we increasingly can, its worth balancing it out against other worthwhile ways to do it. It also has led to an economy in which its increasingly unaffordable to not have two full time workers per family. It is argued this balance is lost, and therefore birthrates suffer. I'd love it if me and my wife could work each 50 or 60%, we in practice we can't. Employers find it unusual, it is going to cost you because governments model their financial structures on the assumption of full time work.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Regardless of spins of pundits, most scientific analysis agree: its due to career demands outweighing everything in ones twenties and traditional support nets not sufficiently being compensated for with alternative support. Most analyses I've seen agree it's due to nonfamily social support systems shifting economic incentives away from having children as a form of personal support insurance, which is why it isn’t more pronounced, among liberal economies, in societies with greater young adult career pressure but instead those with stronger social safety nets.
watwut 6y ago
> its due to career demands outweighing everything in ones twenties and traditional support nets not sufficiently being compensated for with alternative support. What I have seen all repeated the same thing - education and accessible birth control for women lowers the amount of children to be born. The large amount of children is pretty often a result of not having all that much choice. Raising many of them is quite difficult in reality, even if you can afford food for them.
- brnt 6y ago
  No, I disagree. The primary reason is that we keep defining self actualisation through full time careers climbing silly ladders where you can never stall because up or out. If fulltime employment was 25hrs, and/or we wouldn't have to compete with people (mostly men because of the imbalanced parental leave in many places) being able to focus solely on work, nobody would have problems raising children's in their 20ies
  - watwut 6y ago
    It is really not just that. Having kids and staying with them means quite isolating lifestyle, pretty much anything you used to do regularly or pride yourself at being good at becomes impossible or much harder. "Anything" includes socializing with friends and having uninterrupted adult conversations about topics that are not kids. It means sport, art, hobbies, whatever you engaged with or was happy about. It means that your life is very routine with not much happening, but little things being harder then normally (like going to shop or hike). It kind of pushes you toward passivity, because if you want to be active it gets frustrating. But, the isolation, lack of social contact and nothing interesting happening whole months were hardest for me. People sneer about career here as if every woman was having great sky ascending career. And as if men would not liked their jobs fairly regularly. In most cases these are jobs where you get some but little sense of being good at something, but it still keeps you out of depression. Or simply a thing that keeps you having money so that you dont have count every penny every time you buy something. Or that you simply are not desperately dependent on other people.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      It gets less fun, but how much, that depends a lot on how old the kids are, how far you live from your friends, what are your hobbies, whether you live near to your extended family, etc. Sufficiently nerdy people do talk about topics that are not kids, even when their kids are playing next to them. A small baby you can put in a child carrier and go on a walk with your friends and discuss whatever. With pre-school children, you can have a talk with your friends at the playground, while the kids are playing. The most easily you can synchronize with friends who have children in similar age; you can organize a vacation together, or go to a playground together. And you can have some fun when the kids are at their grandparents. Or during the weekend, one parent is with kids, the other has a free day; they can switch their roles the next day. It is definitely not as much fun as it was before. But there are ways to keep some quality moments once in a while.
      - watwut 6y ago
        I have kids. It doea not work the way to describe, because they interrupt you too often for the discussion. Second reason is that their interruptions prevent serious engagement with ... pretty much anything and so your ability to talk about those things go down as well. Fourth, you are not exposed to adults as much - you spend overwhelming majority of your time alone. That in turn makes people much more tiring when you meet them once in a while. Fifth, you have competely different lifestyle then people who dont have kids of the same age. They dont understand you when you need to talk about your issues and frustrations and most likely will just dismiss them. Over time, you will do the same to them as you cease to understand their lifestyles. Then again, people with same age kids that are around are very often having completely different interests and values, so taking about kids is the single one thing you have in common. > one parent is with kids, the other has a free day; they can switch their roles the next day. Yes this helps to keep sanity. But not that this is little bit of time where you want to pack everything - sport, socialization, professional learning, hobby fun. Prior kids, you engage in all of these multiple times a week. You literally socialize all the time in work, m whether you want it or not. Once a week is not enough time nor enouh frequency to be good at something. It means to won't have feeling of personal achievement for a lot of time. I mean, I see it the most clearly as kids get more independent and I see how much easier everything is becoming. I have seen how tiring people were when I came back to work and how difficult and tiring communication was at first. I think it took over year to get comfortable again and two years to build ability to have friends again.
jariel 6y ago
We managed somehow for 5000 years. The constraints that you highlight are entirely a construct of our ostensible 'modern life'. They are self imposed. There's no reason we can't live a high standard of living with 1 person working (though 50% time might work well enough in some disciplines).
- neverminder 6y ago
  I think that whereas little has changed for men, it's mostly influenced by women. In today's society women are encouraged to develop their careers, stay single and have fun through their 20s which is when their fertility is declining while at the same time their standards are rising. There are millions of high achieving single women in their 30s that cannot find a partner because of hypergamy. A few decades of liberalism cannot erase millions of years of evolution.
  - blacktriangle 6y ago
    I've tried and failed many times to explain this phenomenon to women and I can't get it through. Everything these women do that makes them believe their relationship desirability and thus standards in men has increased (education, career) is actually decreasing their relationship desirability (they're older and have less time and energy to devote to family). That's great that women are doing what they want to do, but they also need to accept that when it comes to dating the 30s high achiever ranks far below the mid 20s waitress who wants to be a full-time homemaker and adjust their standards in men accordingly.
    - jdgoesmarching 6y ago
      Interesting that those women struggle to understand your point that they deserves less for prioritizing their own livelihoods during a crucial part of their career rather than meeting HN neckbeard standards of “desirability.” This isn’t hard, people are having less children because the economy is crumbling. Even people with moderately stable jobs are afraid to risk that security by having children.

by brnt 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Regardless of spins of pundits, most scientific analysis agree: its due to career demands outweighing everything in ones twenties and traditional support nets not sufficiently being compensated for with alternative support. Most analyses I've seen agree it's due to nonfamily social support systems shifting economic incentives away from having children as a form of personal support insurance, which is why it isn’t more pronounced, among liberal economies, in societies with greater young adult career pressure but instead those with stronger social safety nets.

watwut 6y ago

> its due to career demands outweighing everything in ones twenties and traditional support nets not sufficiently being compensated for with alternative support. What I have seen all repeated the same thing - education and accessible birth control for women lowers the amount of children to be born. The large amount of children is pretty often a result of not having all that much choice. Raising many of them is quite difficult in reality, even if you can afford food for them.

brnt 6y ago
No, I disagree. The primary reason is that we keep defining self actualisation through full time careers climbing silly ladders where you can never stall because up or out. If fulltime employment was 25hrs, and/or we wouldn't have to compete with people (mostly men because of the imbalanced parental leave in many places) being able to focus solely on work, nobody would have problems raising children's in their 20ies
- watwut 6y ago
  It is really not just that. Having kids and staying with them means quite isolating lifestyle, pretty much anything you used to do regularly or pride yourself at being good at becomes impossible or much harder. "Anything" includes socializing with friends and having uninterrupted adult conversations about topics that are not kids. It means sport, art, hobbies, whatever you engaged with or was happy about. It means that your life is very routine with not much happening, but little things being harder then normally (like going to shop or hike). It kind of pushes you toward passivity, because if you want to be active it gets frustrating. But, the isolation, lack of social contact and nothing interesting happening whole months were hardest for me. People sneer about career here as if every woman was having great sky ascending career. And as if men would not liked their jobs fairly regularly. In most cases these are jobs where you get some but little sense of being good at something, but it still keeps you out of depression. Or simply a thing that keeps you having money so that you dont have count every penny every time you buy something. Or that you simply are not desperately dependent on other people.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    It gets less fun, but how much, that depends a lot on how old the kids are, how far you live from your friends, what are your hobbies, whether you live near to your extended family, etc. Sufficiently nerdy people do talk about topics that are not kids, even when their kids are playing next to them. A small baby you can put in a child carrier and go on a walk with your friends and discuss whatever. With pre-school children, you can have a talk with your friends at the playground, while the kids are playing. The most easily you can synchronize with friends who have children in similar age; you can organize a vacation together, or go to a playground together. And you can have some fun when the kids are at their grandparents. Or during the weekend, one parent is with kids, the other has a free day; they can switch their roles the next day. It is definitely not as much fun as it was before. But there are ways to keep some quality moments once in a while.
    - watwut 6y ago
      I have kids. It doea not work the way to describe, because they interrupt you too often for the discussion. Second reason is that their interruptions prevent serious engagement with ... pretty much anything and so your ability to talk about those things go down as well. Fourth, you are not exposed to adults as much - you spend overwhelming majority of your time alone. That in turn makes people much more tiring when you meet them once in a while. Fifth, you have competely different lifestyle then people who dont have kids of the same age. They dont understand you when you need to talk about your issues and frustrations and most likely will just dismiss them. Over time, you will do the same to them as you cease to understand their lifestyles. Then again, people with same age kids that are around are very often having completely different interests and values, so taking about kids is the single one thing you have in common. > one parent is with kids, the other has a free day; they can switch their roles the next day. Yes this helps to keep sanity. But not that this is little bit of time where you want to pack everything - sport, socialization, professional learning, hobby fun. Prior kids, you engage in all of these multiple times a week. You literally socialize all the time in work, m whether you want it or not. Once a week is not enough time nor enouh frequency to be good at something. It means to won't have feeling of personal achievement for a lot of time. I mean, I see it the most clearly as kids get more independent and I see how much easier everything is becoming. I have seen how tiring people were when I came back to work and how difficult and tiring communication was at first. I think it took over year to get comfortable again and two years to build ability to have friends again.

jariel 6y ago

We managed somehow for 5000 years. The constraints that you highlight are entirely a construct of our ostensible 'modern life'. They are self imposed. There's no reason we can't live a high standard of living with 1 person working (though 50% time might work well enough in some disciplines).

neverminder 6y ago
I think that whereas little has changed for men, it's mostly influenced by women. In today's society women are encouraged to develop their careers, stay single and have fun through their 20s which is when their fertility is declining while at the same time their standards are rising. There are millions of high achieving single women in their 30s that cannot find a partner because of hypergamy. A few decades of liberalism cannot erase millions of years of evolution.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  I've tried and failed many times to explain this phenomenon to women and I can't get it through. Everything these women do that makes them believe their relationship desirability and thus standards in men has increased (education, career) is actually decreasing their relationship desirability (they're older and have less time and energy to devote to family). That's great that women are doing what they want to do, but they also need to accept that when it comes to dating the 30s high achiever ranks far below the mid 20s waitress who wants to be a full-time homemaker and adjust their standards in men accordingly.
  - jdgoesmarching 6y ago
    Interesting that those women struggle to understand your point that they deserves less for prioritizing their own livelihoods during a crucial part of their career rather than meeting HN neckbeard standards of “desirability.” This isn’t hard, people are having less children because the economy is crumbling. Even people with moderately stable jobs are afraid to risk that security by having children.