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I suspect that if you did a more nuanced study, with questions that differentiated between "not wanting kids" and "feeling that you'd be unable to have/raise ch

I suspect that if you did a more nuanced study, with questions that differentiated between "not wanting kids" and "feeling that you'd be unable to have/raise children in a decent way that doesn't severely compromise your ability to live comfortably" you would have a much more interesting result. My experience as a 21 year old is that many of my peers (both male and female) absolutely want to have kids. In fact, I've found it very common for people in my generational cohort ("Zoomers") to openly want large families with 5 or more children. Sure, there's the occasional hardcore childfree hedonist, but they seem to be a minority amongst people 20ish years old. I'm not entirely certain what caused it, some combination of internet-fueled braggadocio or a general sentiment of revolt against the modern world, but it is real. What I suspect is driving the results of these studies is that the same people I'm talking about are generally smart/informed enough to recognize on some level that the prerequisites for having children in a fundamentally decent manner are extraordinarily difficult to obtain. This is on top of a generally pessimistic outlook on geopolitics and a complete lack of faith in our ruling class to secure a habitable (to say nothing of comfortable) future. It is generally accepted that having kids will implode your financial life, social life, and career. It is widely believed that having children is fundamentally an act of cruelty with the reins of history in the hands of our current tepid gerontocracy. For people with the ability to consider it deeply, having children is a profound act of philosophy, a vote of confidence in the future and a claim to a kind sovereignty so indelible that you can reasonably safeguard something of unlimited value. Whether you believe it to be because of tradition or some inherent dimorphism, this is particularly true for men: the expectation of fatherhood is fundamentally libertarian in some very real sense. So on top of all of the macroeconomic factors, you have to consider the particular factors of 2022 that conspire to strip people of agency and subordinate their sense of self beneath a million behemoth systems in an act of distributed partial sacrifice. ... ok, it got a little weird at the end there, but you get the idea.

tsol 4y ago
>My experience as a 21 year old is that many of my peers (both male and female) absolutely want to have kids. In fact, I've found it very common for people in my generational cohort ("Zoomers") to openly want large families with 5 or more children. Sure, there's the occasional hardcore childfree hedonist, but they seem to be a minority amongst people 20ish years old. I'm not entirely certain what caused it, some combination of internet-fueled braggadocio or a general sentiment of revolt against the modern world, but it is real. I wouldn't be surprised if this is just the pendulum swinging in the other direction. In my generation, saying you don't want kids is practically the norm. But society also pushes whatever is in vogue so hard and so blindly that everyone eventually gets sick of it(just look at reddit). Eventually kids being told that having a family is lame are gonna rebel against the status quo and want the traditional upbringing that they keep being told they should stay away from. That's just my theory, but I think it's not hard to find it happening already.

tsol 4y ago

>My experience as a 21 year old is that many of my peers (both male and female) absolutely want to have kids. In fact, I've found it very common for people in my generational cohort ("Zoomers") to openly want large families with 5 or more children. Sure, there's the occasional hardcore childfree hedonist, but they seem to be a minority amongst people 20ish years old. I'm not entirely certain what caused it, some combination of internet-fueled braggadocio or a general sentiment of revolt against the modern world, but it is real. I wouldn't be surprised if this is just the pendulum swinging in the other direction. In my generation, saying you don't want kids is practically the norm. But society also pushes whatever is in vogue so hard and so blindly that everyone eventually gets sick of it(just look at reddit). Eventually kids being told that having a family is lame are gonna rebel against the status quo and want the traditional upbringing that they keep being told they should stay away from. That's just my theory, but I think it's not hard to find it happening already.