14 ms·

I think all these studies skirt very gingerly around a big problem. Stressful work culture, lack of support for families (includes high real-estate costs, long

I think all these studies skirt very gingerly around a big problem. Stressful work culture, lack of support for families (includes high real-estate costs, long commute times, lack of sick leave, etc.) and most importantly a path for women (and men - but its mostly women) who drop out of the workforce and want to get back in once the children are older and more independent. Child rearing takes a group of people not just a nuclear family where both parents work long hours. Cost of living and work culture is forcing people to work long hours and women don't find a good enough reason to give up their freedom, and keep in mind it's what childbirth is in most Asian cultures, a woman giving up what she wants to do until the child is independent. I see no reason why women would ever want children. What's society providing them that they need to make this sacrifice ? All studies mention these, they just don't provide any concrete solutions. It's typically around creating some committee or forum that is looking to change this. Nothing will change, not until the corporations start running out of people to hire or the country runs out of soldiers for defense.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Yhippa 3y ago
Not sure where you are but it feels that this is exactly what it's like in America. I am not sure why nobody really cares and I suspect by the time people try to do something about it, it won't be too late, but it's going to take a Herculean effort to fix. Mindset and structural support.
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  It is. The only difference is that the US (and Canada) are way more welcoming of immigrants than South Korea or Japan. That's basically what's keeping them competitive. I'm also pretty sure that high birth rate from illegal south american immigrants keeps US population going. The legal immigrants have children but at a subsistence level, generally <= 2.
  - angmarsbane 3y ago
    My understanding is that Japan requires dual Japan/US citizens to choose one citizenship when they turn 18. If Japan allowed dual citizenship, they could see dual citizens return and raise families. These dual citizens would enable Japan to maintain more homogeneity via immigration while also increasing population growth.
  - remarkEon 3y ago
    TFR for the United States is 1.84, while South American countries rage from 1.75 (Uruguay) to 2.26 (Bolivia)[1]. It's tricky to find data on how the US TFR breaks out demographically. It would be very interesting, to your point, to see if immigrant TFR just echos the origin country or if there's a debuff applied for living in the United States. Anecdotally, this feels true to me less more Traditional Catholic immigrant families from Mexico or El Salvador but I've no idea if the data backs it up. [1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...
sho_hn 3y ago
Women being expected to stop their own careers and stay home as a housewife used to be quite normal and even expected in South Korea, but this has been changing quite quickly. Nowadays, many women return to work after giving birth - even quite quickly in many cases, and not by choice. Because the couples can't afford the kids otherwise. Anecdotally: Most of my wife's circle of friends are in their early 30s to mid-30s with first children (and we're on the way to fitting this description as well) and back to work, while their mothers stopped working once they had children. This is to say, the previous system was bad, but the new reality is in some sense worse: No, women bearing the brunt of child-bearing alone is not great, but now both parents work very hard in family-hostile work conditions to even make ends meet. Both parents working full-time is very difficult if neither employer is flexible enough not to handle "I have to pick my kid up today" or "my kid is sick".
WanderPanda 3y ago
How did we end up at a point where creating life (literally) is a „not good enough reason“?
- michaelhoney 3y ago
  There are already 8 billion people, we don’t need more. There are plenty of people still who do want children: I’m happy to let them do it
- munk-a 3y ago
  We've allowed everything in life to be assigned a monetary value and it turns out that kids have a very low RoI
  - baq 3y ago
    yeah children used to be the best investment, nowadays in developed countries it seems a lot of young people think the opposite, and they have good reasons to. it's going to be a sad, empty and quiet world in the west a few decades in the future.
  - ilkke 3y ago
    Only in the short-term, which is exactly the problem. Squeeze more now and don't worry about the long-term consequences. "Après nous, le déluge"
    - justrealist 3y ago
      Well more concretely, it's that the people paying the cost do not directly reap the benefits of the investment. A child has extremely high long-term ROI for the economy. But (for good reasons) you can't take out a loan in the name of a future child for a larger house now. Someone (aka) the government needs to be future-sighted enough to make the investment. Unfortunately, governments are run by people who will individually not reap political benefit for good outcomes 30+ years in the future.
      - 3y ago
remarkEon 3y ago
>and most importantly a path for women (and men - but its mostly women) who drop out of the workforce and want to get back in once the children are older and more independent. I don't think this is quite right, and your second paragraph is kind of alluding to the underlying issue. I think it's more that there isn't a pathway for women to drop out of the workforce permanently and revert to a single-income household. A lot of women in my wife's peer group want to do this, but can't make the finances work. Of course, they end up having to pay for child care anyway and maybe it comes out in the wash. Regardless, maybe some kind of UBI can be help here for women with children who simply don't want to go back to work. Aside: you might be commenting specifically on Asian work culture, not sure, but the "give up freedom" thing I don't believe to be unique in that regard.
- itake 3y ago
  My sister is in that boat of not making finances work. Her job pays too well for her to leave the work force. As a man, I’m looking for an independent woman with a good income, because I don’t want to get gutted in a divorce. I’d love to be a SAHD, but it’s difficult for me to find single women with comparable income.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    > My sister is in that boat of not making finances work. Her job pays too well for her to leave the work force. But her finances arent the problem here. Its how high expenses are. Her job could pay 150k/yr or 20k/yr but the situation is the same when she quits. Its good that she at least makes enough money that it justifies working if she wants to.
    - itake 3y ago
      Yes, she could quit her job, move to Appalachia, her husband earn $20k/yr, and grow her own food. But that’s a huge lifestyle reduction. What does retirement and end-of-life healthcare look like if she and her husband make $20k/yr? I think what’s more important is income vs local population income. In SF, she probably earns 3-4x everyone in SF or 10x nationally. In a low cost of area place, her husband’s income might only be 1.5x more, leaving less money for retirement and child care.
famahar 3y ago
I hope we one day see a radical new form of raising children. Historically it was truly a village that raised a child. I never understood how my parents raised 5 children. But looking into it more, there was always a community of people that raised me. Community and mutual aid was huge in the small town in Ethiopia where my parents came from. Coming to Canada, that didn't change. Uncles, aunts, older cousins, long time family friends. Communes have a similar structure but usually get a bad rep. Good podcast episode on the topic https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kristen-ghodsee.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kriste...? "We could be raising our children cooperatively in dwellings designed to enhance rather than inhibit social connection. We could be more sustainably sharing our resources and teaching our children to value collaboration over competition. We could be living in wider lateral networks of love, care, and support; fighting the scourges of loneliness, anxiety, precarity and the many stresses associated with modern life. Most of us are not.”
- throwaway03635 3y ago
  The problem with those types of communities is that they often have a high level of social control. We see a pattern where most of the social development first happens in the cities (sexuality, culture, new ideas) and then slowly spreads to smaller communities. The constraints of small communities leads to many "escaping" to the cities to improve their lives.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  What about introverted subset of people who prefer to be left alone, to not participate in wider social networks, who want to have a family and a door that shuts?
- pid-1 3y ago
  > I never understood how my parents raised 5 children. My 2*(grand)mother raised 11 children. From what I've heard from other family members, the key to success is not giving enough emotional and material support to each child. What I'm trying to say is: the expectations on children quality of life are also much higher vs 100 yrs ago.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> they just don't provide any concrete solutions Childcare subsidies.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kredd 3y ago
Agreed completely, but I’ll add another point. About 50% of my friends are university+ educated women of different ethnicities, but all living in first world countries. We’re also all in our late 20s or 30s, so it’s becoming a “now or never” kind of dilemma for some of them. We used to make “oh it’s expensive!” excuse until we started making decent money. Now that excuse doesn’t work, but there has been a significant precedence showing you can have a fulfilling life without having a child. You can have even a better one unless you have psychological attachment to it. I’ve heard my friends getting baby fever here and there, but then quick reality check of how much work it would be reminds them it’s not worth it. And I completely agree, what’s the point? If you have some sort of spiritual or religious beliefs about life, maybe you can excuse it. But my circles don’t buy into those. We’ve also discussed global depopulation issues on different occasions, and consensus was “well, we didn’t cause this awful environment, so it’s not our problem”. Some sort of game theory problem where if you participate you’re more likely to be screwed unless majority participates. But if you don’t participate, you’re definitely on the winning side. And another note, my friends in their late 30s/40s who always wanted to have a child have exactly one child for myriad of reasons. And obviously that’s not enough. Sorry for the rant, but maybe the older generations were a bit more conscious rather than kicking the can down the road.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  See, the thing is that I cannot entirely shake the feeling that part of this stance is a certain laziness/complacency, essentially a lack of interest in any challenging activities. What I mean is: A lot of the people who come down against child-rearing for lifestyle reasons assign a lot of value to things they'd rather do instead because they provide "great experiences I'd miss out on because I won't have time or money anymore" like "traveling". Which is of course true, having kids is a trade-of. But doesn't raising kids also provide a big set of exciting experiences you are trading-of against? Sure, you can prefer one or the other at will, and it could absolutely be true that your pick is best for you. But I'll say that my friends who are into activities/experiences that provide challenge (e.g. sports, adventuring, what have you) also are often into having kids. That makes me wonder if there's not something to cultivating the kind of experiences you seek to have.
oneTbrain23 3y ago
Singapore solved most of those problems decades ago. Essentially: 1. Force children to take care their aged parents. 2. Entice children to buy housing close to their parents. 3. Ensure priority of children living within close of a school to get into that school. 4. Massive subsidies for childcare. Bigger subsidies for working parents and little for those stay home mum dad. This is to avoid situation in the west where you get free money the more unemployed and children you have. 5. Baby bonus tied to the more children you have. Bonus is locked in a special account with very special and limited use for children needs (hospitals, childcare, school fees). Unlike the western countries baby bonus which parents can redirect to buy TV for themselves. 6. Build clusters of community close to each others with facilities to promote society integration. 7. Allowing low cost domestic helpers from neighboring countries with low wages or unemployed. Unlike western countries asking for equal living minimum wages to wrongly think on citizen would rather be domestic helpers or laborer. Use market force to ensure workers able to change jobs as they like to force employers to increase salary to retain workers. 8. Improve low cost healthcare access (though Korean doing this better). 9. Tightly control property market which dont contribute to national productivity. Ensuring everyone has a home and not hoarding homes to bid up prices (one of the downfall of Japan in 80s because allowing overinflated property....Korean and China seems to following Japanese route which can tie up monthly child support money for servicing debts). 10. Superb public transport and highly subsidies transports to ensure the poor can be as mobile as those rich within country. 11. Encouraging more willing to give-birth-foreigners as citizens to damp down arrogant locals of just want to enjoy being singles. 12. Actively tie subsidies with willingness to start family and having more babies throughout every facet of available subsidies. For example subsidies depends on number of households in a home rather than per individual citizen. This is largely governance issue and not corporate. Korean officials largely undereducated and lack integrity as those in Singapore where they sack officials if even involved in marital affairs NATIONALLY.
nonethewiser 3y ago
There is an inconvenient truth about women leaving the house and entering the workforce.
somenameforme 3y ago
> I see no reason why women would ever want children. What's society providing them that they need to make this sacrifice? What do you think your future holds? If we are entirely realistic, I think in 50-60 years, and perhaps much sooner, we'll almost certainly be dead. On our way out everyone and everything we've ever known will also be dying. Best friends we'd thought would last to the end will fade and disappear long before. And that's just the start. Because well before the end our bodies will begin to fail, with our minds often enough not far behind. And, without family, a very likely scenario is that we simply end up alone. In Japan there are so many people dying completely alone, often unnoticed until a neighbor or service worker smells the rot, that they have a term for it: kodokushi - lonely deaths. [1] South Korea has followed suit with godoksa. By raising a family we not only get to fulfill our ultimate responsibility in the continuance of the species, but also you in many ways provide some continuance of ourselves. And as you age we will always have family, such that we will never truly be alone in this world. It seems to me that the masses of people not having children today is vaguely familiar to the masses of people taking out 6 figure loans to pursue random degrees, unlikely to benefit their ability to provide a living for themselves. They certainly know what everybody is saying about such decisions, but somehow think it won't apply to them. And in any case the consequences are so far removed from the present that it can sometimes be difficult to take them seriously, but that doesn't mean those consequences don't exist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi ------------ Edit: As some odd coincidence, this just popped up on the frontpage of HN. It feels relevant enough to link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327432
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  That's basically my point. There's probably half of humanity today (the women) who can help with this. And no one is making life easier for them if they decide to go through with it. In fact the men most of the time make it harder. Why should women help here? Why acquiesce to the needs of a society that doesn't care about their mental, physical and professional needs?
  - somenameforme 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Yhippa 3y ago

Not sure where you are but it feels that this is exactly what it's like in America. I am not sure why nobody really cares and I suspect by the time people try to do something about it, it won't be too late, but it's going to take a Herculean effort to fix. Mindset and structural support.

orochimaaru 3y ago
It is. The only difference is that the US (and Canada) are way more welcoming of immigrants than South Korea or Japan. That's basically what's keeping them competitive. I'm also pretty sure that high birth rate from illegal south american immigrants keeps US population going. The legal immigrants have children but at a subsistence level, generally <= 2.
- angmarsbane 3y ago
  My understanding is that Japan requires dual Japan/US citizens to choose one citizenship when they turn 18. If Japan allowed dual citizenship, they could see dual citizens return and raise families. These dual citizens would enable Japan to maintain more homogeneity via immigration while also increasing population growth.
- remarkEon 3y ago
  TFR for the United States is 1.84, while South American countries rage from 1.75 (Uruguay) to 2.26 (Bolivia)[1]. It's tricky to find data on how the US TFR breaks out demographically. It would be very interesting, to your point, to see if immigrant TFR just echos the origin country or if there's a debuff applied for living in the United States. Anecdotally, this feels true to me less more Traditional Catholic immigrant families from Mexico or El Salvador but I've no idea if the data backs it up. [1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...

sho_hn 3y ago

Women being expected to stop their own careers and stay home as a housewife used to be quite normal and even expected in South Korea, but this has been changing quite quickly. Nowadays, many women return to work after giving birth - even quite quickly in many cases, and not by choice. Because the couples can't afford the kids otherwise. Anecdotally: Most of my wife's circle of friends are in their early 30s to mid-30s with first children (and we're on the way to fitting this description as well) and back to work, while their mothers stopped working once they had children. This is to say, the previous system was bad, but the new reality is in some sense worse: No, women bearing the brunt of child-bearing alone is not great, but now both parents work very hard in family-hostile work conditions to even make ends meet. Both parents working full-time is very difficult if neither employer is flexible enough not to handle "I have to pick my kid up today" or "my kid is sick".

WanderPanda 3y ago

How did we end up at a point where creating life (literally) is a „not good enough reason“?

michaelhoney 3y ago
There are already 8 billion people, we don’t need more. There are plenty of people still who do want children: I’m happy to let them do it
munk-a 3y ago
We've allowed everything in life to be assigned a monetary value and it turns out that kids have a very low RoI
- baq 3y ago
  yeah children used to be the best investment, nowadays in developed countries it seems a lot of young people think the opposite, and they have good reasons to. it's going to be a sad, empty and quiet world in the west a few decades in the future.
- ilkke 3y ago
  Only in the short-term, which is exactly the problem. Squeeze more now and don't worry about the long-term consequences. "Après nous, le déluge"
  - justrealist 3y ago
    Well more concretely, it's that the people paying the cost do not directly reap the benefits of the investment. A child has extremely high long-term ROI for the economy. But (for good reasons) you can't take out a loan in the name of a future child for a larger house now. Someone (aka) the government needs to be future-sighted enough to make the investment. Unfortunately, governments are run by people who will individually not reap political benefit for good outcomes 30+ years in the future.
    - 3y ago

remarkEon 3y ago

>and most importantly a path for women (and men - but its mostly women) who drop out of the workforce and want to get back in once the children are older and more independent. I don't think this is quite right, and your second paragraph is kind of alluding to the underlying issue. I think it's more that there isn't a pathway for women to drop out of the workforce permanently and revert to a single-income household. A lot of women in my wife's peer group want to do this, but can't make the finances work. Of course, they end up having to pay for child care anyway and maybe it comes out in the wash. Regardless, maybe some kind of UBI can be help here for women with children who simply don't want to go back to work. Aside: you might be commenting specifically on Asian work culture, not sure, but the "give up freedom" thing I don't believe to be unique in that regard.

itake 3y ago
My sister is in that boat of not making finances work. Her job pays too well for her to leave the work force. As a man, I’m looking for an independent woman with a good income, because I don’t want to get gutted in a divorce. I’d love to be a SAHD, but it’s difficult for me to find single women with comparable income.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > My sister is in that boat of not making finances work. Her job pays too well for her to leave the work force. But her finances arent the problem here. Its how high expenses are. Her job could pay 150k/yr or 20k/yr but the situation is the same when she quits. Its good that she at least makes enough money that it justifies working if she wants to.
  - itake 3y ago
    Yes, she could quit her job, move to Appalachia, her husband earn $20k/yr, and grow her own food. But that’s a huge lifestyle reduction. What does retirement and end-of-life healthcare look like if she and her husband make $20k/yr? I think what’s more important is income vs local population income. In SF, she probably earns 3-4x everyone in SF or 10x nationally. In a low cost of area place, her husband’s income might only be 1.5x more, leaving less money for retirement and child care.

famahar 3y ago

I hope we one day see a radical new form of raising children. Historically it was truly a village that raised a child. I never understood how my parents raised 5 children. But looking into it more, there was always a community of people that raised me. Community and mutual aid was huge in the small town in Ethiopia where my parents came from. Coming to Canada, that didn't change. Uncles, aunts, older cousins, long time family friends. Communes have a similar structure but usually get a bad rep. Good podcast episode on the topic https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kristen-ghodsee.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kriste...? "We could be raising our children cooperatively in dwellings designed to enhance rather than inhibit social connection. We could be more sustainably sharing our resources and teaching our children to value collaboration over competition. We could be living in wider lateral networks of love, care, and support; fighting the scourges of loneliness, anxiety, precarity and the many stresses associated with modern life. Most of us are not.”

throwaway03635 3y ago
The problem with those types of communities is that they often have a high level of social control. We see a pattern where most of the social development first happens in the cities (sexuality, culture, new ideas) and then slowly spreads to smaller communities. The constraints of small communities leads to many "escaping" to the cities to improve their lives.
thriftwy 3y ago
What about introverted subset of people who prefer to be left alone, to not participate in wider social networks, who want to have a family and a door that shuts?
pid-1 3y ago
> I never understood how my parents raised 5 children. My 2*(grand)mother raised 11 children. From what I've heard from other family members, the key to success is not giving enough emotional and material support to each child. What I'm trying to say is: the expectations on children quality of life are also much higher vs 100 yrs ago.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> they just don't provide any concrete solutions Childcare subsidies.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kredd 3y ago

Agreed completely, but I’ll add another point. About 50% of my friends are university+ educated women of different ethnicities, but all living in first world countries. We’re also all in our late 20s or 30s, so it’s becoming a “now or never” kind of dilemma for some of them. We used to make “oh it’s expensive!” excuse until we started making decent money. Now that excuse doesn’t work, but there has been a significant precedence showing you can have a fulfilling life without having a child. You can have even a better one unless you have psychological attachment to it. I’ve heard my friends getting baby fever here and there, but then quick reality check of how much work it would be reminds them it’s not worth it. And I completely agree, what’s the point? If you have some sort of spiritual or religious beliefs about life, maybe you can excuse it. But my circles don’t buy into those. We’ve also discussed global depopulation issues on different occasions, and consensus was “well, we didn’t cause this awful environment, so it’s not our problem”. Some sort of game theory problem where if you participate you’re more likely to be screwed unless majority participates. But if you don’t participate, you’re definitely on the winning side. And another note, my friends in their late 30s/40s who always wanted to have a child have exactly one child for myriad of reasons. And obviously that’s not enough. Sorry for the rant, but maybe the older generations were a bit more conscious rather than kicking the can down the road.

sho_hn 3y ago
See, the thing is that I cannot entirely shake the feeling that part of this stance is a certain laziness/complacency, essentially a lack of interest in any challenging activities. What I mean is: A lot of the people who come down against child-rearing for lifestyle reasons assign a lot of value to things they'd rather do instead because they provide "great experiences I'd miss out on because I won't have time or money anymore" like "traveling". Which is of course true, having kids is a trade-of. But doesn't raising kids also provide a big set of exciting experiences you are trading-of against? Sure, you can prefer one or the other at will, and it could absolutely be true that your pick is best for you. But I'll say that my friends who are into activities/experiences that provide challenge (e.g. sports, adventuring, what have you) also are often into having kids. That makes me wonder if there's not something to cultivating the kind of experiences you seek to have.

oneTbrain23 3y ago

Singapore solved most of those problems decades ago. Essentially: 1. Force children to take care their aged parents. 2. Entice children to buy housing close to their parents. 3. Ensure priority of children living within close of a school to get into that school. 4. Massive subsidies for childcare. Bigger subsidies for working parents and little for those stay home mum dad. This is to avoid situation in the west where you get free money the more unemployed and children you have. 5. Baby bonus tied to the more children you have. Bonus is locked in a special account with very special and limited use for children needs (hospitals, childcare, school fees). Unlike the western countries baby bonus which parents can redirect to buy TV for themselves. 6. Build clusters of community close to each others with facilities to promote society integration. 7. Allowing low cost domestic helpers from neighboring countries with low wages or unemployed. Unlike western countries asking for equal living minimum wages to wrongly think on citizen would rather be domestic helpers or laborer. Use market force to ensure workers able to change jobs as they like to force employers to increase salary to retain workers. 8. Improve low cost healthcare access (though Korean doing this better). 9. Tightly control property market which dont contribute to national productivity. Ensuring everyone has a home and not hoarding homes to bid up prices (one of the downfall of Japan in 80s because allowing overinflated property....Korean and China seems to following Japanese route which can tie up monthly child support money for servicing debts). 10. Superb public transport and highly subsidies transports to ensure the poor can be as mobile as those rich within country. 11. Encouraging more willing to give-birth-foreigners as citizens to damp down arrogant locals of just want to enjoy being singles. 12. Actively tie subsidies with willingness to start family and having more babies throughout every facet of available subsidies. For example subsidies depends on number of households in a home rather than per individual citizen. This is largely governance issue and not corporate. Korean officials largely undereducated and lack integrity as those in Singapore where they sack officials if even involved in marital affairs NATIONALLY.

nonethewiser 3y ago

There is an inconvenient truth about women leaving the house and entering the workforce.

somenameforme 3y ago

> I see no reason why women would ever want children. What's society providing them that they need to make this sacrifice? What do you think your future holds? If we are entirely realistic, I think in 50-60 years, and perhaps much sooner, we'll almost certainly be dead. On our way out everyone and everything we've ever known will also be dying. Best friends we'd thought would last to the end will fade and disappear long before. And that's just the start. Because well before the end our bodies will begin to fail, with our minds often enough not far behind. And, without family, a very likely scenario is that we simply end up alone. In Japan there are so many people dying completely alone, often unnoticed until a neighbor or service worker smells the rot, that they have a term for it: kodokushi - lonely deaths. [1] South Korea has followed suit with godoksa. By raising a family we not only get to fulfill our ultimate responsibility in the continuance of the species, but also you in many ways provide some continuance of ourselves. And as you age we will always have family, such that we will never truly be alone in this world. It seems to me that the masses of people not having children today is vaguely familiar to the masses of people taking out 6 figure loans to pursue random degrees, unlikely to benefit their ability to provide a living for themselves. They certainly know what everybody is saying about such decisions, but somehow think it won't apply to them. And in any case the consequences are so far removed from the present that it can sometimes be difficult to take them seriously, but that doesn't mean those consequences don't exist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi ------------ Edit: As some odd coincidence, this just popped up on the frontpage of HN. It feels relevant enough to link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327432

orochimaaru 3y ago
That's basically my point. There's probably half of humanity today (the women) who can help with this. And no one is making life easier for them if they decide to go through with it. In fact the men most of the time make it harder. Why should women help here? Why acquiesce to the needs of a society that doesn't care about their mental, physical and professional needs?
- somenameforme 3y ago