4 ms·

All evidence suggests that people stop having kids when their society gets richer and better educated.

whatshisface 3y ago
Children are massively more expensive, and less useful, in richer societies. I don't think anybody in Japan would be allowed to provide for their children the standards of care provided in a country with a growing population. As for the second point, if you are a farmer in a country with little physical mobility, your children are your retirement savings. If you live in America, your children are future employees of a company ten states away. I read a statistic somewhere that it costs $2M to raise a child. Considering that it's considered a horrible imposition to ask your kids for money, or even to ask them to take care of you, it's easy to explain why urbanization, industrial development, and education, work against population growth.
- jojobas 3y ago
  "Useful" is subjective. Somehow a billion-year-old imperative to continue your bloodline by all costs faded to nothing in many people. Go figure.
  - justahuman74 3y ago
    That's ok, it'll only take a couple of generations for the people who don't feel the drive to have kids to be out of the gene pool. Then the next baby boom begins.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    The imperative to continue your bloodline never existed. For one thing, animals have no concept of ancestry.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sebmellen 3y ago
      Every living being exists because of the innate drive of its direct ancestors to procreate.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      some animals that live in groups where the leader gets to do all the mating, if a new leader emerges, he will kill all the offsprings of the old leader. i'd say that this is a clear sign that animals do have strong biological drive to care about continuing their bloodline
ChainOfFools 3y ago
When there is consequently more to do, more to experience, more people to meet, more to discover, more novelty to novel at. In short, the modern era has more of what makes the childhood experience what it is, enough to spill over into what was previously considered adulthood. I sometimes ponder what would happen if we did discover the secret to substantial life extension or even immortality; if this phenomenon of trying to stretch that delightful halcyon glow of childhood wonder - what I've heard the Finns call lapsuus - would extend into decades or centuries or perpetuity as a result. It would if nothing else provide a plausible explanation for the behavior of characters like Q from Star Trek.

Children are massively more expensive, and less useful, in richer societies. I don't think anybody in Japan would be allowed to provide for their children the standards of care provided in a country with a growing population. As for the second point, if you are a farmer in a country with little physical mobility, your children are your retirement savings. If you live in America, your children are future employees of a company ten states away. I read a statistic somewhere that it costs $2M to raise a child. Considering that it's considered a horrible imposition to ask your kids for money, or even to ask them to take care of you, it's easy to explain why urbanization, industrial development, and education, work against population growth.

jojobas 3y ago
"Useful" is subjective. Somehow a billion-year-old imperative to continue your bloodline by all costs faded to nothing in many people. Go figure.
- justahuman74 3y ago
  That's ok, it'll only take a couple of generations for the people who don't feel the drive to have kids to be out of the gene pool. Then the next baby boom begins.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  The imperative to continue your bloodline never existed. For one thing, animals have no concept of ancestry.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sebmellen 3y ago
    Every living being exists because of the innate drive of its direct ancestors to procreate.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    some animals that live in groups where the leader gets to do all the mating, if a new leader emerges, he will kill all the offsprings of the old leader. i'd say that this is a clear sign that animals do have strong biological drive to care about continuing their bloodline

ChainOfFools 3y ago

When there is consequently more to do, more to experience, more people to meet, more to discover, more novelty to novel at. In short, the modern era has more of what makes the childhood experience what it is, enough to spill over into what was previously considered adulthood. I sometimes ponder what would happen if we did discover the secret to substantial life extension or even immortality; if this phenomenon of trying to stretch that delightful halcyon glow of childhood wonder - what I've heard the Finns call lapsuus - would extend into decades or centuries or perpetuity as a result. It would if nothing else provide a plausible explanation for the behavior of characters like Q from Star Trek.