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I just want to add that some people simply don’t want to have children. This is important to note because “should I have children” is kind of a novel question,

I just want to add that some people simply don’t want to have children. This is important to note because “should I have children” is kind of a novel question, especially for women, in the context of human history. If you go back a century or three, women (especially from a middle class or upper class family) were expected to wed. And wives were expected to bear and care for children. Choice was not particularly involved, and most career paths were unavailable for self-sufficiency in the first place. A question like “would I be happier advancing my career as a scientist or choosing to raise children” is a foreign question a century ago. Now it is a question that the modern woman must grapple with. This is similar to what you are saying, but it’s the social side of the coin rather than the economic one: an upper middle class family may easily be able to afford raising children, yet the wife still does not want to sacrifice her career which embodies her ambitions, her passions, and her sense of worth.

baq 3y ago
Good point though I anecdotally can say that some these women decide that they'd like a child later in life when it's biologically very late (euphemism here). Also back then a lot (heard numbers like 25%) of women didn't have children. Not sure what this changes about the equation given that it probably wasn't their choice either, but it sounds like a lot.
RestlessMind 3y ago
Having children is definitely going to be another "tragedy of commons". At an individual level, one has to sacrifice a lot in terms of time, money and effort to raise children. Some people love that (myself included), some people would love to do that but do not have resources for whatever reasons (student loans, crazy work culture, expensive housing etc). But a lot of people simply don't want to have children and all the costs associated with raising them. And that "selfish" attitude worked over the past 2-3 generations - why go through the hassle of raising kids when the government will anyway provide you pension and assistance when you get old? The costs of kids are privately born but the benefits are socialized in terms of taxes and welfare programs. And now you are looking at South Korea with a 0.7 TFR, with other nations not far behind. It will be interesting to see how South Korea and Japan deal with it. A range of outcomes are possible - a "Ship of Theseus" scenario with these cultures getting slowly replaced by immigrants, awesome future based on awesome robots, dystopian future based on overhyped AI tech, complete collapse of social programs as the young refuse to care for the previous generations who either preferred partying or were worked to bone by their corporate culture, or a soft landing where the society actually get its act together.

baq 3y ago

Good point though I anecdotally can say that some these women decide that they'd like a child later in life when it's biologically very late (euphemism here). Also back then a lot (heard numbers like 25%) of women didn't have children. Not sure what this changes about the equation given that it probably wasn't their choice either, but it sounds like a lot.

RestlessMind 3y ago

Having children is definitely going to be another "tragedy of commons". At an individual level, one has to sacrifice a lot in terms of time, money and effort to raise children. Some people love that (myself included), some people would love to do that but do not have resources for whatever reasons (student loans, crazy work culture, expensive housing etc). But a lot of people simply don't want to have children and all the costs associated with raising them. And that "selfish" attitude worked over the past 2-3 generations - why go through the hassle of raising kids when the government will anyway provide you pension and assistance when you get old? The costs of kids are privately born but the benefits are socialized in terms of taxes and welfare programs. And now you are looking at South Korea with a 0.7 TFR, with other nations not far behind. It will be interesting to see how South Korea and Japan deal with it. A range of outcomes are possible - a "Ship of Theseus" scenario with these cultures getting slowly replaced by immigrants, awesome future based on awesome robots, dystopian future based on overhyped AI tech, complete collapse of social programs as the young refuse to care for the previous generations who either preferred partying or were worked to bone by their corporate culture, or a soft landing where the society actually get its act together.