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I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, an

I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially in urban areas. Between birth control and lots of other avenues for women to spend there time, it's not that surprising that you always see plummeting birthrates whenever a society urbanized and moves up the economic ladder. Some people want kids. Many simply do not.

prewett 3y ago
Wanting to raise children requires a giving mindset. In US, at least, we have a very self-focused culture. From a perspective of self-actualization, children don't make sense. Unless it turns out that nurturing and developing others is part of what it means to be human...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  This line if reasoning is such bullshit, sorry. The underlying tone is always "childfree people are selfish", with the underlying message "parents are such giving people", as you pretty much explicitly say in your comment. Except I have known plenty of parents, including some with gigantic families, who are some of the most selfish, narcissistic people I've ever met. They basically saw their children as an extension of themselves, like they were building some "noble family" bullshit or something. Simultaneously, I've also seen people without children who have dedicated their entire lives to public service and helping others. Of course not all parents and people without parents are like this. I personally have never seen any evidence that those with or without kids (voluntarily) differ in their giving nature towards others.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  Then why is this a worldwide phenomenon when standard of living rises to a certain level?
simonsarris 3y ago
I think this thinking tries to obscure an immense yearning that is buried within people who may want families, but do not feel it is realistic for them. I know this because I post a lot about my own children on twitter and some of the DMs I get are essentially confessions from men and women saying exactly that. In survey data completed fertility is usually way lower than desired fertility, and even then on surveys we cannot expect people to necessarily say what they really want if they do not think it is achievable for them.
oneTbrain23 3y ago
Just make life harder for singles but way better for married couples especially those reaching having children stages. Higher taxes for singles. No subsidies for expensive homes. No benefits. Reduced healthcare.
throwawaysleep 3y ago
I ponder this question myself on the edge of Gen Z and my life is simplified tremendously if I just essentially pause it in high earning young person mode. Money is abundant for travel and anything I want. I don't need to figure out dating. Means I don't need to figure out everything from conflict resolution to clothing. I don't need to struggle to buy a ton of housing. I have friends/a sister who will have kids I can just play rich uncle to. I can retire decades early due to overemployment and spend an absurd amount of money every year doing whatever I want. The Peter Pan life has a lot going for it. I am in my mid 20s and my life can essentially be on coast with a ton of fun for the rest of my life.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Many people feel this way in their mid 20s, it often changes when you hit your early to mid 30s. Most of us don't believe that it'll happen to us either. :)
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    Maybe, but between dating skills and allocation of spend I may otherwise be committed to the strategy whether I regret it or not.
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      A skill is something that you can train! We've all been there...
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  neverland doesn’t have a need for geriatric medicine. you can have a ton of fun for a large portion of the rest of your life, and hopefully something happens such that later life care won’t be a concern. robot caretakers, clinical immortality, or otherwise. this isn’t judgement, that may be the safer gamble. but it is a gamble.
- automatic6131 3y ago
  It's strange that other people will pay the burden of raising children that support your retirement. You might think that your earning and savings supports your retirement, but no. It will be the next generation of workers that actualize it. Money is just unit of account, it by itself does not give you a retirement. Only working age, working people. We've found ourselves in a very strange moral hazard. You spend your money to raise kids that will work to earn my savings in my retirement. Hopefully the state can afford your retirement too, but that's unlikely, because no one had children. Because this society sterilizes itself.
throwaway03635 3y ago
I agree with you. Now that women are not required to have children due to cultural or economic reasons, many choose not to. I don't see why many politicians think that is surprising. There are too many demands in modern societies. Ironically, a kid may actually require even more work now than in the past. In the past the kids were less dependent on their parents. Now they need to be followed up closely at school and activities outside of school as well. I don't have children myself but I hear others have a full schedule at home where they spend a huge amount of their time helping with homework, driving the kids to activities or working for their local soccer club. The parents basically end up as as part time managers of their children's careers. In some cases they barely have any personal time. The day is full of chores and activities. Not everyone wants that. The only way we can change this is to make sure that it is possible to have kids, career and enough free personal time. I don't know if it is possible to do that without the government spending lots of money on these initiatives.
remarkEon 3y ago
I agree, it's not surprising given birth control and economic pressures to join the workforce, but it is new and distinctly modern, and writing it off as "some people just don't want kids" isn't a satisfactory explanation. Something is deeply wrong in a society if it has all of the social safety net tools, like Finland does, to ease the burdens of childbearing and people still choose to not do it. It's a society in a slow, generations long suicide.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  The future looks bleak for humans. It might not be in fact but it looks that way. Climate change and “AI” disruption or worse…it takes a special individual to want to bring a person into these situations. People do, I did, but it’s not easy.
  - remarkEon 3y ago
    The future always looks bleak for humans, which is just part of the human experience. But today, we have the most material and technological abundance in history and people gesture vaguely at a long term time horizon problem and think "it's over". It was "over" during the Great Depression, and it was over before that during Spanish Flu. And before that during the Thirty Years War and the Black Death, and so on back to the Great Floods of mythology. Luckily, they didn't give up.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth, then doesn't it seem rational? Like imagine a meteor was going to destroy the Earth in a year - would it make sense to have children? 10 years? 100?
  - remarkEon 3y ago
    >If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth This sort of absurd hyperbole is a good sign you've been propagandized into believing something for the benefit of others.
javajosh 3y ago
I had kids relatively late in life (42) and it's been amazing. I love being a dad, far more than I thought I would. It wasn't really about wanting kids or not wanting kids, it felt more like...puberty in that for most of human history you don't really get to choose to do it or not, it happens pretty naturally. I guess that's unfashionable to say. Perhaps some would say it's irresponsible. But the opening montage in Idiocracy looms large, I believe thinking too much about kids is a trap. Basically you should have them if you can. Yes, it's hard work, and I was very happy to change my last diaper. But the rewards far, far outweigh the costs. Children are on balance a true joy, their laughter and smiles so pure and wonderful, that I can't imagine life without them.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  This is good except for two things: (1) women lose their fertility at "a certain age" and if they put off childbearing for too long they might lose the opportunity and (2) if you have children late your life will overlap less with them. For that matter there is the issue of chasing a toddler around when you are 50 and less energetic than when you are 30. It's probably not so good to have children when you are very young and not so good to have them when you are old, there is some optimum in between but unfortunately many people who put this off find the choice is made for them.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    Luckily mom was 10 years younger than me. And yeah I have some concerns about being "the old dad" but I'm not that old and at least right now I'm pretty active. Had to start using reading glasses last year, so I know that won't last. But it will last long enough.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      Stay fit, I’ve had 60-70 year olds ride last me in XC MTB races when I was in my 30s haha
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
salmonfamine 3y ago
A lot of liberal (in the classical, broad sense) young folks simply shrug their shoulders at this fact -- not everyone wants kids, so what? I think it's worth considering, if you're one of these people, that without children being born to liberal parents, the "extremists" of the world -- fundamentalist muslims, christians, and so on -- will inherit the earth. Of course some of their children will grow up to be liberals, but that number will inevitably decrease as the total number of liberals does as well. If you believe that equality, feminism, human rights, and so on would suffer in that world, then I think you should consider if not having kids is really a big deal after all.
- logicchains 3y ago
  >Of course some of their children will grow up to be liberals, but that number will inevitably decrease as the total number of liberals does as well. This is particularly true because political views are to some degree heritable. And it's not just a hypothetical thing: many conservatives believe they can "win" if they just manage to have children and hold out for a few decades as the liberals slowly breed themselves out of existence.
- schmookeeg 3y ago
  ...so then they inherit the earth? I wonder if this sort of thing is cyclical. The next dark age, caused by the earth being overrun by the fecund and illiberal peoples of the world until they can only eat themselves. Maybe a plague wipes them all out and they are too poor/illiterate/unlucky to survive it. 600 years later, someone re-invents the internet, for people to use to post that they don't want kids. I don't think "let's make some babies to keep those extremists at bay" is the sexiest of pillow talk. But then again, I have dated individuals with severe enough views on the world where I could see that actually working. :) My lifespan is too short to worry overmuch about any of it.
  - salmonfamine 3y ago
    Haha, yeah it does fall apart on the individual level. I don't think I would convince my girlfriend to have kids by talking dirty with population statistics ;) And for the record I'm just another childless, un-married late-twenties tech guy that wants to travel and hang out with my friends on the weekend. So I'm definitely part of the "problem" not the solution. I just mean to say -- we've inherited a really rich intellectual tradition that has borrowed from thinkers around the world, and really we are torchbearers for that way of life. It's not a guarantee that progress will march forever onward. So we need to think about how to keep our societies going in a way that still produces families. Maybe that means the government steps in and says that every workplace has to have a day care center. It seemed to work for Patagonia. Maybe it means we start some crazy scheme where companies hire married couples as a package deal. Maybe it means we have to rebuild our cities to have denser neighborhoods with lots of families clustered together. Maybe we all have to start living in hippie communes. I have no idea. I don't want society to go backwards, but I don't want our values to die out either. So it's clear that we need radical change.
logicchains 3y ago
A lot of it is explained by rising marriage ages. Women lose the ability to have children at around 40, so the later they get married, the less chance they have of having children, even if all other things are equal. E.g. if we assume an even chance of having children per year, then we'd expect an increase of the average marriage age from 32 to 36 to halve the birth rate (as in the former there are 8 years in which the woman could give birth, while in the latter there are only 4). This means that even if people's biological fertility and desire to have children didn't change at all, people delaying marriage to later in life would still potentially result in a big drop in the number of children born.
- a0-prw 3y ago
  This is a good point. The average age of menopause in the US is, however, 51, not 40. That does not undermine your argument in principle, though. Probably, a woman's chance of getting pregnant decreases the older she is, even if she is still menstruating. That would complicate the numbers but would not contradict your argument. This is why a province in China is offering a cash bonus to couples who marry before the woman is 25.
- frail_figure 3y ago
  Clearly, it's impossible for women to have children before getting married.
rich_sasha 3y ago
It's true, and fair enough. It is also true that societies are brutally darwinian. The ones that prevail are the ones that can produce the most offspring, and bring it to economic maturity. This is the story behind the enormous success of China and India, per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. They are still nuclear superpowers with lunar missions. It doesn't matter if they are illiberal, there are more of them. It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies. But then I suppose, the burden of childcare should be better socialized. It used to rely more on grandparents, who would live nearby and be a good 10-20 years younger than nowadays. But then again, you're saying, where that is in place people still don't want to have children. So maybe that doesn't work either.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. This is a line of reasoning I don't get. I mean I understand it, I just strongly disagree. Countries are made up of people, individual people. How important is it really that a country is a "superpower" if the average person eeks out a horrible existence. To take it to a further extreme, look at the Russian empire of the late 18th/early 19th century. Russia was definitely a Great Power at that time, while also the majority of the population were slaves (there really wasn't much of a difference between serfdom and slavery) who were borderline starving, or actually starving, during that time. But rah rah Russia definitely got some nice palaces out of it at the time that certainly make great monuments today. I'm much prefer to live in a "non-superpower" with a much better quality of life for me and the people I love.
  - rich_sasha 3y ago
    Yeah, true. But I think the argument holds also for this utility function. There is something about your society that you like, else you would be somewhere else. And, bluntly, if your society doesn't make babies, today, then in 20-30 years time there won't be people brought up in this culture. Either your society will go into decline for lack of said people, or will rely on immigration (assuming it's attractive to expats), eg people with different values to your society's. It's not saying one society is better than another, only that if you think there is something good about your society (liberal rights? nukes? hell, maybe you're North Korean and like dictators!) then it takes babies to sustain it. The default is you will get people brought up with values of most populous societies, which may or may not align with yours.

prewett 3y ago

Wanting to raise children requires a giving mindset. In US, at least, we have a very self-focused culture. From a perspective of self-actualization, children don't make sense. Unless it turns out that nurturing and developing others is part of what it means to be human...

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
This line if reasoning is such bullshit, sorry. The underlying tone is always "childfree people are selfish", with the underlying message "parents are such giving people", as you pretty much explicitly say in your comment. Except I have known plenty of parents, including some with gigantic families, who are some of the most selfish, narcissistic people I've ever met. They basically saw their children as an extension of themselves, like they were building some "noble family" bullshit or something. Simultaneously, I've also seen people without children who have dedicated their entire lives to public service and helping others. Of course not all parents and people without parents are like this. I personally have never seen any evidence that those with or without kids (voluntarily) differ in their giving nature towards others.
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
Then why is this a worldwide phenomenon when standard of living rises to a certain level?

simonsarris 3y ago

I think this thinking tries to obscure an immense yearning that is buried within people who may want families, but do not feel it is realistic for them. I know this because I post a lot about my own children on twitter and some of the DMs I get are essentially confessions from men and women saying exactly that. In survey data completed fertility is usually way lower than desired fertility, and even then on surveys we cannot expect people to necessarily say what they really want if they do not think it is achievable for them.

oneTbrain23 3y ago

Just make life harder for singles but way better for married couples especially those reaching having children stages. Higher taxes for singles. No subsidies for expensive homes. No benefits. Reduced healthcare.

throwawaysleep 3y ago

I ponder this question myself on the edge of Gen Z and my life is simplified tremendously if I just essentially pause it in high earning young person mode. Money is abundant for travel and anything I want. I don't need to figure out dating. Means I don't need to figure out everything from conflict resolution to clothing. I don't need to struggle to buy a ton of housing. I have friends/a sister who will have kids I can just play rich uncle to. I can retire decades early due to overemployment and spend an absurd amount of money every year doing whatever I want. The Peter Pan life has a lot going for it. I am in my mid 20s and my life can essentially be on coast with a ton of fun for the rest of my life.

throwaway22032 3y ago
Many people feel this way in their mid 20s, it often changes when you hit your early to mid 30s. Most of us don't believe that it'll happen to us either. :)
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  Maybe, but between dating skills and allocation of spend I may otherwise be committed to the strategy whether I regret it or not.
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    A skill is something that you can train! We've all been there...
catchnear4321 3y ago
neverland doesn’t have a need for geriatric medicine. you can have a ton of fun for a large portion of the rest of your life, and hopefully something happens such that later life care won’t be a concern. robot caretakers, clinical immortality, or otherwise. this isn’t judgement, that may be the safer gamble. but it is a gamble.
automatic6131 3y ago
It's strange that other people will pay the burden of raising children that support your retirement. You might think that your earning and savings supports your retirement, but no. It will be the next generation of workers that actualize it. Money is just unit of account, it by itself does not give you a retirement. Only working age, working people. We've found ourselves in a very strange moral hazard. You spend your money to raise kids that will work to earn my savings in my retirement. Hopefully the state can afford your retirement too, but that's unlikely, because no one had children. Because this society sterilizes itself.

throwaway03635 3y ago

I agree with you. Now that women are not required to have children due to cultural or economic reasons, many choose not to. I don't see why many politicians think that is surprising. There are too many demands in modern societies. Ironically, a kid may actually require even more work now than in the past. In the past the kids were less dependent on their parents. Now they need to be followed up closely at school and activities outside of school as well. I don't have children myself but I hear others have a full schedule at home where they spend a huge amount of their time helping with homework, driving the kids to activities or working for their local soccer club. The parents basically end up as as part time managers of their children's careers. In some cases they barely have any personal time. The day is full of chores and activities. Not everyone wants that. The only way we can change this is to make sure that it is possible to have kids, career and enough free personal time. I don't know if it is possible to do that without the government spending lots of money on these initiatives.

remarkEon 3y ago

I agree, it's not surprising given birth control and economic pressures to join the workforce, but it is new and distinctly modern, and writing it off as "some people just don't want kids" isn't a satisfactory explanation. Something is deeply wrong in a society if it has all of the social safety net tools, like Finland does, to ease the burdens of childbearing and people still choose to not do it. It's a society in a slow, generations long suicide.

ChatGTP 3y ago
The future looks bleak for humans. It might not be in fact but it looks that way. Climate change and “AI” disruption or worse…it takes a special individual to want to bring a person into these situations. People do, I did, but it’s not easy.
- remarkEon 3y ago
  The future always looks bleak for humans, which is just part of the human experience. But today, we have the most material and technological abundance in history and people gesture vaguely at a long term time horizon problem and think "it's over". It was "over" during the Great Depression, and it was over before that during Spanish Flu. And before that during the Thirty Years War and the Black Death, and so on back to the Great Floods of mythology. Luckily, they didn't give up.
hotpotamus 3y ago
If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth, then doesn't it seem rational? Like imagine a meteor was going to destroy the Earth in a year - would it make sense to have children? 10 years? 100?
- remarkEon 3y ago
  >If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth This sort of absurd hyperbole is a good sign you've been propagandized into believing something for the benefit of others.

javajosh 3y ago

I had kids relatively late in life (42) and it's been amazing. I love being a dad, far more than I thought I would. It wasn't really about wanting kids or not wanting kids, it felt more like...puberty in that for most of human history you don't really get to choose to do it or not, it happens pretty naturally. I guess that's unfashionable to say. Perhaps some would say it's irresponsible. But the opening montage in Idiocracy looms large, I believe thinking too much about kids is a trap. Basically you should have them if you can. Yes, it's hard work, and I was very happy to change my last diaper. But the rewards far, far outweigh the costs. Children are on balance a true joy, their laughter and smiles so pure and wonderful, that I can't imagine life without them.

PaulHoule 3y ago
This is good except for two things: (1) women lose their fertility at "a certain age" and if they put off childbearing for too long they might lose the opportunity and (2) if you have children late your life will overlap less with them. For that matter there is the issue of chasing a toddler around when you are 50 and less energetic than when you are 30. It's probably not so good to have children when you are very young and not so good to have them when you are old, there is some optimum in between but unfortunately many people who put this off find the choice is made for them.
- javajosh 3y ago
  Luckily mom was 10 years younger than me. And yeah I have some concerns about being "the old dad" but I'm not that old and at least right now I'm pretty active. Had to start using reading glasses last year, so I know that won't last. But it will last long enough.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Stay fit, I’ve had 60-70 year olds ride last me in XC MTB races when I was in my 30s haha
BaseballPhysics 3y ago

salmonfamine 3y ago

A lot of liberal (in the classical, broad sense) young folks simply shrug their shoulders at this fact -- not everyone wants kids, so what? I think it's worth considering, if you're one of these people, that without children being born to liberal parents, the "extremists" of the world -- fundamentalist muslims, christians, and so on -- will inherit the earth. Of course some of their children will grow up to be liberals, but that number will inevitably decrease as the total number of liberals does as well. If you believe that equality, feminism, human rights, and so on would suffer in that world, then I think you should consider if not having kids is really a big deal after all.

logicchains 3y ago
>Of course some of their children will grow up to be liberals, but that number will inevitably decrease as the total number of liberals does as well. This is particularly true because political views are to some degree heritable. And it's not just a hypothetical thing: many conservatives believe they can "win" if they just manage to have children and hold out for a few decades as the liberals slowly breed themselves out of existence.
schmookeeg 3y ago
...so then they inherit the earth? I wonder if this sort of thing is cyclical. The next dark age, caused by the earth being overrun by the fecund and illiberal peoples of the world until they can only eat themselves. Maybe a plague wipes them all out and they are too poor/illiterate/unlucky to survive it. 600 years later, someone re-invents the internet, for people to use to post that they don't want kids. I don't think "let's make some babies to keep those extremists at bay" is the sexiest of pillow talk. But then again, I have dated individuals with severe enough views on the world where I could see that actually working. :) My lifespan is too short to worry overmuch about any of it.
- salmonfamine 3y ago
  Haha, yeah it does fall apart on the individual level. I don't think I would convince my girlfriend to have kids by talking dirty with population statistics ;) And for the record I'm just another childless, un-married late-twenties tech guy that wants to travel and hang out with my friends on the weekend. So I'm definitely part of the "problem" not the solution. I just mean to say -- we've inherited a really rich intellectual tradition that has borrowed from thinkers around the world, and really we are torchbearers for that way of life. It's not a guarantee that progress will march forever onward. So we need to think about how to keep our societies going in a way that still produces families. Maybe that means the government steps in and says that every workplace has to have a day care center. It seemed to work for Patagonia. Maybe it means we start some crazy scheme where companies hire married couples as a package deal. Maybe it means we have to rebuild our cities to have denser neighborhoods with lots of families clustered together. Maybe we all have to start living in hippie communes. I have no idea. I don't want society to go backwards, but I don't want our values to die out either. So it's clear that we need radical change.

logicchains 3y ago

A lot of it is explained by rising marriage ages. Women lose the ability to have children at around 40, so the later they get married, the less chance they have of having children, even if all other things are equal. E.g. if we assume an even chance of having children per year, then we'd expect an increase of the average marriage age from 32 to 36 to halve the birth rate (as in the former there are 8 years in which the woman could give birth, while in the latter there are only 4). This means that even if people's biological fertility and desire to have children didn't change at all, people delaying marriage to later in life would still potentially result in a big drop in the number of children born.

a0-prw 3y ago
This is a good point. The average age of menopause in the US is, however, 51, not 40. That does not undermine your argument in principle, though. Probably, a woman's chance of getting pregnant decreases the older she is, even if she is still menstruating. That would complicate the numbers but would not contradict your argument. This is why a province in China is offering a cash bonus to couples who marry before the woman is 25.
frail_figure 3y ago
Clearly, it's impossible for women to have children before getting married.

rich_sasha 3y ago

It's true, and fair enough. It is also true that societies are brutally darwinian. The ones that prevail are the ones that can produce the most offspring, and bring it to economic maturity. This is the story behind the enormous success of China and India, per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. They are still nuclear superpowers with lunar missions. It doesn't matter if they are illiberal, there are more of them. It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies. But then I suppose, the burden of childcare should be better socialized. It used to rely more on grandparents, who would live nearby and be a good 10-20 years younger than nowadays. But then again, you're saying, where that is in place people still don't want to have children. So maybe that doesn't work either.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. This is a line of reasoning I don't get. I mean I understand it, I just strongly disagree. Countries are made up of people, individual people. How important is it really that a country is a "superpower" if the average person eeks out a horrible existence. To take it to a further extreme, look at the Russian empire of the late 18th/early 19th century. Russia was definitely a Great Power at that time, while also the majority of the population were slaves (there really wasn't much of a difference between serfdom and slavery) who were borderline starving, or actually starving, during that time. But rah rah Russia definitely got some nice palaces out of it at the time that certainly make great monuments today. I'm much prefer to live in a "non-superpower" with a much better quality of life for me and the people I love.
- rich_sasha 3y ago
  Yeah, true. But I think the argument holds also for this utility function. There is something about your society that you like, else you would be somewhere else. And, bluntly, if your society doesn't make babies, today, then in 20-30 years time there won't be people brought up in this culture. Either your society will go into decline for lack of said people, or will rely on immigration (assuming it's attractive to expats), eg people with different values to your society's. It's not saying one society is better than another, only that if you think there is something good about your society (liberal rights? nukes? hell, maybe you're North Korean and like dictators!) then it takes babies to sustain it. The default is you will get people brought up with values of most populous societies, which may or may not align with yours.