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> Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life? Apparently most of humanity for most of recorded history. 20-something males (in Ja

> Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life? Apparently most of humanity for most of recorded history. 20-something males (in Japan and, to an increasing degree in the US) are not foregoing dating and marriage due to ‘working conditions.’ The reasons are, regrettably, more complex. Indeed, in the current state we’re in, giving young men more leisure time and money would undoubtedly result in more hours spent playing with their new phones.

xyzzyz 4y ago
^ This guy gets it. The widespread idea that too little material wealth, and lousy working condition is what prevents family formation and procreation is one of those things that the people who inherit the earth from us (should there still be any) will be laughing in a few hundred years, just like we find it unfathomable that our ancestors honestly believed in witches and the reality of curses and magic spells.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  Consider that it's more expensive to have children have children as well. It's not so much too little material wealth as it is too little wealth to sustain the "normal" childhood. Not so long ago, kids existed as cheap labor and a retirement account. One didn't need to treat them like human beings much less provide literacy or schooling to them. Whatever functional uses they had before have been replaced by machines and and markets. Today, unless one is passing down the family company, having a kid serves no functional purpose except as a "fun" activity or cultural performance. Anyone who is having children today is choosing to invest in/burden themselves with a more expensive responsibility than previous generations had.
  - burntoutfire 4y ago
    My grandparents had 2 and 4 children respectively in communist Poland in the fifties in sixties, while living in what nowadays would be classified as abject poverty (e.g. a 6-person family living in 400 sq ft flat). Being very, very poor and having to work 6 days a week didn't stop them from starting families. It's all about what you value in live and for them children were top priority, so they made it happen, even though they came with huge sacrifices. Obviously, people in our times just don't care about having children that strongly, so even mild (in comparison) sacrifices required are enough to make them go childless.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
gexla 4y ago
There's still something to this, though maybe not as the parent comment worded it. Culture in modern Japan is significantly different from "most of recorded history." If the cultural belief is that you need a house, car, and the means to support a family as a pre-requisite for dating, then maybe you just drop out of the idea if those things seem unattainable. In poorer SE Asian countries, such as the Philippines, you don't have these same expectations. That country is still a place where people barely surviving off a farm have large families. There is also the factor where the Catholic Church resists the idea of birth control.
SubiculumCode 4y ago
pron, vrpron, games, online chat, job. about sums it up.

xyzzyz 4y ago

^ This guy gets it. The widespread idea that too little material wealth, and lousy working condition is what prevents family formation and procreation is one of those things that the people who inherit the earth from us (should there still be any) will be laughing in a few hundred years, just like we find it unfathomable that our ancestors honestly believed in witches and the reality of curses and magic spells.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
Consider that it's more expensive to have children have children as well. It's not so much too little material wealth as it is too little wealth to sustain the "normal" childhood. Not so long ago, kids existed as cheap labor and a retirement account. One didn't need to treat them like human beings much less provide literacy or schooling to them. Whatever functional uses they had before have been replaced by machines and and markets. Today, unless one is passing down the family company, having a kid serves no functional purpose except as a "fun" activity or cultural performance. Anyone who is having children today is choosing to invest in/burden themselves with a more expensive responsibility than previous generations had.
- burntoutfire 4y ago
  My grandparents had 2 and 4 children respectively in communist Poland in the fifties in sixties, while living in what nowadays would be classified as abject poverty (e.g. a 6-person family living in 400 sq ft flat). Being very, very poor and having to work 6 days a week didn't stop them from starting families. It's all about what you value in live and for them children were top priority, so they made it happen, even though they came with huge sacrifices. Obviously, people in our times just don't care about having children that strongly, so even mild (in comparison) sacrifices required are enough to make them go childless.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

gexla 4y ago

There's still something to this, though maybe not as the parent comment worded it. Culture in modern Japan is significantly different from "most of recorded history." If the cultural belief is that you need a house, car, and the means to support a family as a pre-requisite for dating, then maybe you just drop out of the idea if those things seem unattainable. In poorer SE Asian countries, such as the Philippines, you don't have these same expectations. That country is still a place where people barely surviving off a farm have large families. There is also the factor where the Catholic Church resists the idea of birth control.

SubiculumCode 4y ago

pron, vrpron, games, online chat, job. about sums it up.