6 ms·

We have a societal problem when the rational individual choice (to provide your children the best head start) is to wait until your fertility declines to have c

We have a societal problem when the rational individual choice (to provide your children the best head start) is to wait until your fertility declines to have children.

rconti 4y ago
It seems fairly natural that a couple in most societies (current and historical) would be better able to provide for their children the older they are. The main exception I can think is family support; having younger grandparents and great grandparents could be an advantage, I guess? I'm not sure I'd look at a society where people have lots of children so they can put them to work and say "yeah, this is the way society should be!"
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > It seems fairly natural that a couple in most societies (current and historical) would be better able to provide for their children the older they are. When I was born in 1991 and my sister in 1995, a simple police officer and a nurse in half-time could provide for two children with ease, in one of what was even back then one of the most expensive cities in Germany. Today, me (IT worker) and my s/o (public health administration) can barely afford a flat and two cats. Fuck that shit, we need rent controls, higher wages and higher taxes on the rich. Then people like me are not forced to wait until 35 that they can start having children.
  - vardump 4y ago
    Rent in Germany is really really cheap. Even in "expensive" cities. Energy, on the other hand, not so.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    I was under the impression that programming and IT is very undervalued in Germany, like you're basically earning slightly above average in most cases. At least that's what I gather from two friends who live there.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      It is an average employment and I'd not even say it's undervalued. We simply don't have the insane amount of VC money that fuels the equally insane US wages in the tech sector - which has both benefits and problems.
      - moonchrome 4y ago
        Benefits being that you're barely making rent as a working couple ?
  - dzonga 4y ago
    actually you need more market based rent. remove restrictions that incentivize people not to build housing. tax the rich on land value - which means not have empty lots build a lot of houses encourage a dynamic market that rewards labor and boom you've achieved low rents, high wages
- jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  In western countries historically men were typically a bit older than their wife but the wife usually was fairly young still. Definitely way younger than now. I think the average maternal age in the US is close to 30 now. This was a rational arrangement since women had fewer economic opportunities. Now women can do basically everything men can do so they choose to defer pregnancy, which has its own consequences that people are now learning to manage and deal with through IVF, egg freezing, etc. Interestingly, genetic mutations from the mother are roughly constant regardless of her age. Paternal genetic mutations rise with age. IIRC a 38 year old man's sperm has double the number of mutations a 28 year old man has.
  - herrrk 4y ago
    You sure about that? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pa...
    - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
      > In Yorkshire in the 14th and 15th centuries, the age range for most brides was between 18 and 22 years and the age of the grooms was similar; rural Yorkshire women tended to marry in their late teens to early twenties while their urban counterparts married in their early to middle twenties. In the 15th century, the average Italian bride was 18 and married a groom 10–12 years her senior. An unmarried Tuscan woman 21 years of age would be seen as past marriageable age, the benchmark for which was 19 years, and easily 97 percent of Florentine women were married by the age of 25 years while 21 years was the average age of a contemporary English bride. > Ireland's average age of marriage in 1830 was 23.8 for women and 27.47 for men where they had once been about 21 and 25, respectively, and only about 10% of adults remained unmarried;[22] in 1840, they had respectively risen to 24.4 and 27.7;[23][24] in the decades after the Great Famine, the age of marriage had risen to 28–29 for women and 33 for men and as much as a third of Irishmen and a fourth of Irishwomen never married due to chronic economic problems that discouraged early marriage. Doesn't really contradict what I said, although the age gap between bride and groom was fairly variable (but no country that I'm aware of has a pattern of older bride, younger groom).
- creaturemachine 4y ago
  Monetarily maybe, but not physically. I'm 42 with a 5-year-old and man do I wish I was doing this in my 30's.
  - PakG1 4y ago
    Had those times when your back seized up and you couldn't even lie down properly? :) Been there, done that. If only I had developed better exercise habits when younger. Well, better late than never, though that late sometimes feels like never.
onion2k 4y ago
...rational individual choice... It's a choice in the same sense that I've chosen not to buy a Ferrari because I can't afford one.
- dionidium 4y ago
  This really doesn't make any sense. We are not poorer than our ancestors and they figured it out. People have convinced themselves that the requirements for having children are far beyond what they actually are. In fact, I think it's precisely our wealth that scares people about the prospect. You're going to have to trade away some of that wealth to have children and people are understandably nervous about that.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    We are not poorer than our ancestors and they figured it out. Quite a lot of them died in childbirth.
    - dionidium 4y ago
      Another way in which we are much richer than they were!
waboremo 4y ago
While true, the desire to push everyone into heavy productivity mode from ages 18-55 are a societal problem, there is also a financial (and educational) problem where solutions to combat the aging fertility problem are often locked behind procedures that cost more than a year's salary for majority of people. An example of this is that freezing your eggs costs upwards of $30k, and is still viewed as something only very select late 30's successful women do.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  >An example of this is that freezing your eggs costs upwards of $30k, and is still viewed as something only very select late 30's successful women do. Isn't that also very unreliable ? When we went to IVF clinic they told us that freezing the eggs has much lower chance of them being usable compared to fertilized eggs.
- skorpeon87 4y ago
  Even if you make egg freezing cheap, it will still have an abysmal success rate (particularly if a woman waits until her 30s to have the eggs freezed), and should rationally be viewed as a hail Mary of last resort. This should not be viewed as the default rational path towards pregnancy, even if it were free. A society which is structured to encourage this path is setting people up for serious disappointment.
dionidium 4y ago
That would suggest that, in fact, it is not the rational choice. People are too precious about having kids. And when I say "people" I mean me. I waited until I was 40. That was stupid. I should have started sooner. Everything would have been fine.
SoftTalker 4y ago
There is also a lot of pressure on women to "have a career" which contributes to them waiting to marry and have kids. It's not really possible to optimize both being a mother and having a career, it's all tradeoffs and those who choose motherhood and a more domestic life are made to feel like they have sacrificed or lost out on something.
- firstfewshells 4y ago
  And who exactly is putting this pressure on women? Most men would choose a healthy, fertile woman over a career oriented one. I do think it's women that are taking on the pressure themselves in their quest to have it all.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - exitb 4y ago
    Many families couldn’t reach their financial goals with only one spouse working.
- LdSGSgvupDV 4y ago
  According to divorce rate, I think it is reasonable to choose "have a career" first. At least, it would be financially independent.
- dudul 4y ago
  Do you have examples of how this pressure is implemented? AFAIK it has been shown many times that "career woman" is absolutely not a trait men find attractive.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Well I'm not a woman, so I don't have direct experience. But I think that young girls, for example, are frequently told in school and at home that they can be anything they want, doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. and that is great, but I think very little is said about being a mother and their biological clock and the tradeoffs that entails, or if it is addressed it is sort of glossed over with a "you can have it all" message. So girls grow up with a career-oriented mindset, and don't do any careful thinking about what they want, or think about kids/family as something they will do "later" or "when I'm ready" and before they know it they find themselves at 35 years old and unable to get pregnant.
sneak 4y ago
It seems to me the rational individual choice (speaking of the planning of the timing of kids, before having them) would be to not have kids at all? Kids take resources away from the individuals who have them.

We have a societal problem when the rational individual choice (to provide your children the best head start) is to wait until your fertility declines to have children.

rconti 4y ago

It seems fairly natural that a couple in most societies (current and historical) would be better able to provide for their children the older they are. The main exception I can think is family support; having younger grandparents and great grandparents could be an advantage, I guess? I'm not sure I'd look at a society where people have lots of children so they can put them to work and say "yeah, this is the way society should be!"

mschuster91 4y ago
> It seems fairly natural that a couple in most societies (current and historical) would be better able to provide for their children the older they are. When I was born in 1991 and my sister in 1995, a simple police officer and a nurse in half-time could provide for two children with ease, in one of what was even back then one of the most expensive cities in Germany. Today, me (IT worker) and my s/o (public health administration) can barely afford a flat and two cats. Fuck that shit, we need rent controls, higher wages and higher taxes on the rich. Then people like me are not forced to wait until 35 that they can start having children.
- vardump 4y ago
  Rent in Germany is really really cheap. Even in "expensive" cities. Energy, on the other hand, not so.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  I was under the impression that programming and IT is very undervalued in Germany, like you're basically earning slightly above average in most cases. At least that's what I gather from two friends who live there.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    It is an average employment and I'd not even say it's undervalued. We simply don't have the insane amount of VC money that fuels the equally insane US wages in the tech sector - which has both benefits and problems.
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      Benefits being that you're barely making rent as a working couple ?
- dzonga 4y ago
  actually you need more market based rent. remove restrictions that incentivize people not to build housing. tax the rich on land value - which means not have empty lots build a lot of houses encourage a dynamic market that rewards labor and boom you've achieved low rents, high wages
jeffreyrogers 4y ago
In western countries historically men were typically a bit older than their wife but the wife usually was fairly young still. Definitely way younger than now. I think the average maternal age in the US is close to 30 now. This was a rational arrangement since women had fewer economic opportunities. Now women can do basically everything men can do so they choose to defer pregnancy, which has its own consequences that people are now learning to manage and deal with through IVF, egg freezing, etc. Interestingly, genetic mutations from the mother are roughly constant regardless of her age. Paternal genetic mutations rise with age. IIRC a 38 year old man's sperm has double the number of mutations a 28 year old man has.
- herrrk 4y ago
  You sure about that? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pa...
  - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
    > In Yorkshire in the 14th and 15th centuries, the age range for most brides was between 18 and 22 years and the age of the grooms was similar; rural Yorkshire women tended to marry in their late teens to early twenties while their urban counterparts married in their early to middle twenties. In the 15th century, the average Italian bride was 18 and married a groom 10–12 years her senior. An unmarried Tuscan woman 21 years of age would be seen as past marriageable age, the benchmark for which was 19 years, and easily 97 percent of Florentine women were married by the age of 25 years while 21 years was the average age of a contemporary English bride. > Ireland's average age of marriage in 1830 was 23.8 for women and 27.47 for men where they had once been about 21 and 25, respectively, and only about 10% of adults remained unmarried;[22] in 1840, they had respectively risen to 24.4 and 27.7;[23][24] in the decades after the Great Famine, the age of marriage had risen to 28–29 for women and 33 for men and as much as a third of Irishmen and a fourth of Irishwomen never married due to chronic economic problems that discouraged early marriage. Doesn't really contradict what I said, although the age gap between bride and groom was fairly variable (but no country that I'm aware of has a pattern of older bride, younger groom).
creaturemachine 4y ago
Monetarily maybe, but not physically. I'm 42 with a 5-year-old and man do I wish I was doing this in my 30's.
- PakG1 4y ago
  Had those times when your back seized up and you couldn't even lie down properly? :) Been there, done that. If only I had developed better exercise habits when younger. Well, better late than never, though that late sometimes feels like never.

onion2k 4y ago

...rational individual choice... It's a choice in the same sense that I've chosen not to buy a Ferrari because I can't afford one.

dionidium 4y ago
This really doesn't make any sense. We are not poorer than our ancestors and they figured it out. People have convinced themselves that the requirements for having children are far beyond what they actually are. In fact, I think it's precisely our wealth that scares people about the prospect. You're going to have to trade away some of that wealth to have children and people are understandably nervous about that.
- onion2k 4y ago
  We are not poorer than our ancestors and they figured it out. Quite a lot of them died in childbirth.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    Another way in which we are much richer than they were!

waboremo 4y ago

While true, the desire to push everyone into heavy productivity mode from ages 18-55 are a societal problem, there is also a financial (and educational) problem where solutions to combat the aging fertility problem are often locked behind procedures that cost more than a year's salary for majority of people. An example of this is that freezing your eggs costs upwards of $30k, and is still viewed as something only very select late 30's successful women do.

moonchrome 4y ago
>An example of this is that freezing your eggs costs upwards of $30k, and is still viewed as something only very select late 30's successful women do. Isn't that also very unreliable ? When we went to IVF clinic they told us that freezing the eggs has much lower chance of them being usable compared to fertilized eggs.
skorpeon87 4y ago
Even if you make egg freezing cheap, it will still have an abysmal success rate (particularly if a woman waits until her 30s to have the eggs freezed), and should rationally be viewed as a hail Mary of last resort. This should not be viewed as the default rational path towards pregnancy, even if it were free. A society which is structured to encourage this path is setting people up for serious disappointment.

dionidium 4y ago

That would suggest that, in fact, it is not the rational choice. People are too precious about having kids. And when I say "people" I mean me. I waited until I was 40. That was stupid. I should have started sooner. Everything would have been fine.

SoftTalker 4y ago

There is also a lot of pressure on women to "have a career" which contributes to them waiting to marry and have kids. It's not really possible to optimize both being a mother and having a career, it's all tradeoffs and those who choose motherhood and a more domestic life are made to feel like they have sacrificed or lost out on something.

firstfewshells 4y ago
And who exactly is putting this pressure on women? Most men would choose a healthy, fertile woman over a career oriented one. I do think it's women that are taking on the pressure themselves in their quest to have it all.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- exitb 4y ago
  Many families couldn’t reach their financial goals with only one spouse working.
LdSGSgvupDV 4y ago
According to divorce rate, I think it is reasonable to choose "have a career" first. At least, it would be financially independent.
dudul 4y ago
Do you have examples of how this pressure is implemented? AFAIK it has been shown many times that "career woman" is absolutely not a trait men find attractive.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Well I'm not a woman, so I don't have direct experience. But I think that young girls, for example, are frequently told in school and at home that they can be anything they want, doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. and that is great, but I think very little is said about being a mother and their biological clock and the tradeoffs that entails, or if it is addressed it is sort of glossed over with a "you can have it all" message. So girls grow up with a career-oriented mindset, and don't do any careful thinking about what they want, or think about kids/family as something they will do "later" or "when I'm ready" and before they know it they find themselves at 35 years old and unable to get pregnant.

sneak 4y ago

It seems to me the rational individual choice (speaking of the planning of the timing of kids, before having them) would be to not have kids at all? Kids take resources away from the individuals who have them.