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You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children. The avg American is completely

• nradov 3y ago
  The average American owns a home. Current homeownership rate it 66%. Some states such as Iowa and Minnesota are particularly high. If you're referring to people of child bearing age though the rate is lower.
• atomicnumber3 3y ago
  I'm baffled my peers, who absolutely could afford to, still have no interest. These are people making 150-200k (and at my prior job, 200-400k).
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s... https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed-April2023 https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed...
  • ekianjo 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • aaomidi 3y ago
      I don’t think it’s selfless or selfish to have or not have kids. It just is. There’s no reason to say it’s selfish tbh.
      • masklinn 3y ago
        Seems the opposite of selfish from the point of view of “world does not exactly look good and getting better”.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • maxdoop 3y ago
      How is it selfish to not have kids? Selfishness implies another party; if the kid doesn’t even exist, what is selfish?
      • meowkit 3y ago
        It can be construed either way. If you want kids, its selfish to bring the other party into existence. Life isn't all great, and you don't have a choice in whether or not you're born. If you don't want kids, its selfish because you are not supporting the society (other party) that supports your existence. If we don't have kids above the replacement rate, society doesn't continue. If you are fine with that great, but its hypocritical if you plan to continue to benefit from society in your own life.
        • maxdoop 3y ago
          What of the people that have children but those children do not contribute in any meaningful way to society? Is the implication here that every child born must somehow be a net-positive to society? I see what you're saying about the replacement rate, but I don't see how, on a smaller scale, someone choosing to not have children is a selfish act within the context of a society that is not yet below "replacement" level.
      • aantix 3y ago
        There’s literally thousands of generations prior that have made someone’s life possible. And then they wash their hands of the matter and say “nope, I’m not giving anyone else a chance at life. I’ll enjoy mine but it ends here”. That is selfishness.
        • defrost 3y ago
          And yet there are more people alive now than there has ever been. Plenty of chances for a good life out there, more than ever. What is this bizarre obsession some have with endless growth? Why is it that having more and more people is so " essential"? How many billions are enough to stabilise at?
        • 3y ago
  • sneed_chucker 3y ago
    The societal norms and structures that promoted natalism are gone in western countries for much of the population. Raising kids is hard work. Ideally you have them young and live close to your family so that you have grandparents to help with childcare. But our society tells people to wait as long as possible to have kids, and to prioritize career over other things - so once people do have kids, if they ever do so, then often grandparents are too old or far away to fill that traditional role. So lots of people are stuck paying thousands a month for daycare. Just one of many ways that our system finds innovative ways to extract money out of people for things that used to be free or part of being in a community.
    • jimbob45 3y ago
      Raising kids is hard work. I would bet this plays a large part - people today respect the difficulty in a way past parents previously did not. Birth rates are certainly declining but I would bet the rates of accidental infant/toddler death are down as well. That said, I personally know parents that are just taunting SIDS with the way they ignore infant sleeping best practices even though they’ve read the books to know better.
      • auggierose 3y ago
        That's just the thing, isn't it. You can try to oblige to all best practices and have zero kids in the process, or you can just have the kids and figure it out as you go. No matter the kid mortality rate, the second approach still wins.
      • The_Colonel 3y ago
        Societal expectation on the care for children grew immensely over the past few generations. When I was a child, parents largely just covered the physical needs and the kids were otherwise left alone to do their own thing. I remember being bored a lot, sitting in a room or roaming the streets. Nowadays there's a widespread expectation that parents should organize activities, drive their kids' education, just be way more involved in their lives.
      • silentdanni 3y ago
  • jwells89 3y ago
    This is where the difference between affordability and safety come in. Obviously someone making that much could afford to have kids, but assuming tech hub (e.g. SF) cost of living, it’ll take a few years of salary like that to accrue enough financial padding to be certain that a chain of unfortunate events won’t put them out on the street once the cost of raising a family is added in. This is why you see a lot of high earners waiting until the last second to have kids, if they do. Financial security like you have while making good money without kids is hard to let go of.
  • voidfunc 3y ago
    I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?
    • kenjackson 3y ago
      Thank you for not having kids! That said, while they do require some sacrifice, at least for myself -- it has been by far the most enjoyable part of my life so far.
    • nostrebored 3y ago
      You’re benefiting from other people’s sacrifice. Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children. And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.
      • lukevp 3y ago
        If they work for money and use it to pay the children to care for them, what difference does it make if they also have kids or not? Why would your kids have to be the ones to care for you for it to “even out”? In that argument, is daycare banned because the child is not cared for by the parents of the child? What if one of the parents dies? Is it ok to pay for help then?
        • nostrebored 3y ago
          The daycare bit is incoherent. The true cost of end of life care 1. Is already socialized in many western countries 2. Impacts human capital allocation in countries 3. Requires other people’s children to take care of you. If there are no kids, society stops functioning. 4. Will continue to rise in price as there are fewer young people When you consider that most old people do not fully fund their retirement even with existing subsidies, you can see that this is an odd proposition. Some people’s work will be valuable enough to offset their end of life care. It will be an increasingly smaller number over time given trends.
  • ssnistfajen 3y ago
    Birthrate by income levels is approaching a dumbbell distribution in industrialized nations. Lower income people have kids due to the lack of options, while ultra-high income people have kids due to the need for heirs (and they can afford to completely offload childcare to dedicated high-quality staff). Those in the middle are stuck because having children is a net negative to the continuation of career advancement, especially women due the unavoidable need for parental leave. The commitmments required to raising children, especially newborns, will disrupt travel plans which is a significant component of the typical middle class lifestyle. Childcare will also cost a significant sum of money, sometimes as much as mortgage payments in high CoL areas, without completely relieving the parents of their duties.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > without completely relieving the parents of their duties. That's an underappreciated point. Kids in daycares and kindergartens get sick a lot. Those places are pathogen swapping grounds. Especially early on, you may have your kid 2 weeks in, 2 weeks out on average. And the "on average" is a killer, too - you can't schedule when your kid will get sick, so you're effectively on-call all the time anyway, and have to have a job compatible with you just taking off in the middle of the day and getting a day or two of leave, on the spot, at random.
  • mise_en_place 3y ago
    My net worth is north of 5 or 6 million now, on a good day. My salary is mid 5 figures with TC. You just happened to hit a proverbial jackpot, in another sense. You don't think I haven't had my share of exes? You don't think I've ever tried to settle down? You had blind luck in your romantic endeavors. But please don't wear that as some sort of weird badge of honor, it cheapens the whole thing, in my honest opinion.
    • WXLCKNO 3y ago
      Do you mean mid 6 figures
  • kelnos 3y ago
    I could absolutely afford to have children, but have chosen not to. The main reason is that I just don't feel "called" to be a parent. When I think about (and see, from others I know who have kids) the amount of work, and complete shift in lifestyle, it takes to raise a child, I get completely turned off by the idea. If I had a kid, I'm sure I'd love them, and derive joy from them, but I don't believe the trade off is worth it. Maybe I'll end up being wrong about that, but I'd rather grow old and regret not having kids than regret having them. I think people shouldn't have kids unless they are really sure they want to be a parent. Anything less sounds like a big mistake. Anyhow, have you actually talked to your childless peers about this? Hopefully there are at least some with whom you feel comfortable bringing up this kind of topic, with people who will give you a thoughtful, non-judgmental answer. I think you might find that they all have a variety of reasons for not having kids, and money may not be a big factor.
    • geff82 3y ago
      "The amount of work".... oh dear. As if caring for other people is only work. From what will you get distracted by having other people around you (kids)? From Instragram? Cycling? Reading books? What intensely important things do you have to do that deserve no distraction? Having kids is not work. It is not only joy either. It is just the natural way of being a human. The - natural - way - of - being - a - human!!! Natural, like sleeping. Eating. Sure, sometimes kids stress you. But then, nature has made sure that you'll mostly remember the good moments. You don't have to be overly perfect to have kids. Just don't be an overly bad person and talk to them often. Whatever environment they get born in: they will be ok with it. You don't need to be grandiose. Do what you naturally can, what you enjoy. And they'll enjoy it. Humans are made to adapt to having kids. Kids are made to adapt to non-perfect parents. Just avoid the obviously bad stuff and all is good. Your life is good. You looking back on your life will be good.
      • surgical_fire 3y ago
        > "The amount of work".... oh dear. As if caring for other people is only work. From what will you get distracted by having other people around you (kids)? From Instragram? Cycling? Reading books? What if they prefer Instagram, Cycling and Reading Books rather than raising children? Why are you so concerned about other people's lifestyles? Are you going to pay their rent or help them with their chores? I decided to have a child, and it was a conscious decision I made with my partner, fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more. Deciding not to have a child would have been equally as valid. I find it funny that this discussion elicits so much passion from people that decided to have children. Do you need validation from other people to justify your own decisions? Whenever I am asked about it, I say that you should not have children unless you are absolutely certain that you want a child in your life, and that your life is stable enough to accommodate one. The world sucks even in the best of times. To condemn someone to existence when their lives will be made more difficult is selfish and cruel.
  • hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    It could simply be that child rearing and career success are substitute goods, at least for a plurality of the population. I don't like admitting that, but it seems reasonable to suspect.
• jollyllama 3y ago
  Good point, but that's never stopped people before. Even if this is the worst poverty ever inflicted, you'd have to chalk it up to the combination of that plus birth control and/or changed social norms.
• pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Have you noticed that much, much poorer places often have a much higher birth rate? I think there is something else going on. And I mean poorer in terms of actual living conditions on the ground.
  • CalRobert 3y ago
    Poorer places haven't financialized housing usually.
    • heartbreak 3y ago
      Poorer is a relative term here. The income/birth rate discrepancy is probably happening within your local community.
    • lolinder 3y ago
      This isn't enough of an explanation, because surviving is still harder in such places than it is in wealthy countries with low birth rates. Birth rates are inversely correlated with wealth regardless of housing affordability.
      • CalRobert 3y ago
        True, I was thinking of colleagues who had moved from Eastern Europe to Ireland and were telling me that it was much more common to have homes without a mortgage, they weren't as likely to be a vehicle for getting rich, NIMBYs weren't such a big thing, etc. Maybe it's a holdover from the Soviet Union.
    • jmopp 3y ago
      I don't know, slumlords charging an exorbitant rent for a shack is a thing.
  • dotnet00 3y ago
    When you're poorer, especially in countries with less well enforced legal systems, you're not as negatively affected by having more children. Your priority is simply being able to stay fed and taking what work you can get, not buying a home in an area conducive to your highly specialized career. More kids are just another mouth to feed until they become capable of contributing to the family finances (typically at much younger ages than in the West).
• pokstad 3y ago
  Who said OP was American? Also, there’s plenty of affordable places in America to have kids if you stay away from expensive cities.
  • slaw 3y ago
    Could you show us these affordable places?
    • Dig1t 3y ago
      You can buy a house in Shreveport, Louisiana for 10k or less. There are many towns and cities in the US with extremely low housing costs. Most of West Virginia is a good example as well. The reason Shreveport always comes to mind when I think of cheap housing is because I always remember that John Carmack and John Romero owned a little lakehouse there and that's where they lived while making Doom.
      • selimthegrim 3y ago
        I live in Louisiana. When Bobby Jindal was running for governor the first time against Kathleen Blanco in 2004, she put out an ad that featured the nappiest, hair sticking up picture of Jindal you could possibly imagine and coupled it with the tagline “Wake up Louisiana, before it’s too late” (implied subtext: and you elect a black man) I do hear she regretted this on her deathbed stricken with cancer. But more to the point, a friend of mine was at a polling place in Shreveport during that election and witnessed a fistfight between two voters in the parking lot over whether Bobby Jindal was in fact, black or not.
        • sirpunch 3y ago
          Bobby Jindal is an Indian American born to immigrant parents from Punjab, India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jindal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jindal
          • selimthegrim 3y ago
• bruhbruh78 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • afavour 3y ago
    Eh? If we’re in a “tech is a bubble” conversation then “the average American” conversation is out of the window. Tech workers earn way above the average. If you’re accepting that tech parents have the money to raise kids it stands to reason the OP would wonder why their peers aren’t also raising kids.
    • bruhbruh78 3y ago
      [flagged]
  • petersellers 3y ago
    Let's put aside for a moment your extremely broad characterization of the behavior of "all parents". Do you not think that society should have an interest in ensuring that children are properly nurtured, educated, cared for, etc.?
  • ghxst 3y ago
    Out of curiosity, is this what you think of your own parents as well?
• xyzelement 3y ago
  // The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now And yet somehow places I visit (which lately has been between NY, Ohio, and Florida) has young families living in houses. I am not saying there's no challenge but your comment would imply that these houses are standing empty because nobody can afford them when in reality each one coming to the market is immediately snapped up mainly by families looking to expland.
  • latentcall 3y ago
    In my area these houses are snatched up by real estate companies and turned into rentals within a week of closing.
    • xyzelement 3y ago
      Who is living in those rentals?
      • swells34 3y ago
        Young people paying a massive portion of their income (significantly larger than previous generations) just to have a roof, and gaining zero equity in the process. Hence "renting", as opposed to "owning".
• macinjosh 3y ago
  False, folks just choose to live in places they cannot afford. Plenty of small towns in the US dying for new blood. You could buy a block's worth of houses for what one in SF, Austin, Seattle, NYC, LA, etc. goes for. Remote work + starlink makes this possible.
  • latentcall 3y ago
    Remote work is a luxury, most people in the workforce do not work remote. However yes if you work remote that is a possibility.
• vidarh 3y ago
  The most consistent predictor of the decline of the birth rate in a society is increased levels of wealth, which indicates it's in no way that simple. Personally, I think it is that expectations rise, both for your own life and for that of children once your purchasing power increases. It's harder to give it up than to not have it in the first place. Having children increasingly has to compete with a lot of other rewarding things that require far less commitment and far lower costs.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • lumost 3y ago
    Having children has also become higher risk, both in absolute costs - as well as risks associated to the likely possibility of divorce and single-parenthood.
    • vidarh 3y ago
      It had plenty of risks before too. Doing genealogy, e.g. of one of my great-great grandfather's children, several died young and left behind children, some ran away from responsibilities (one child - my grandmothers first cousin - ended up in care and was adopted because her mother was too poor to care for her and her dad ran off to the US with his brothers, and we didn't learn she existed until a few years after she'd died) or were forced to work abroad for years at a time. Of 12 or so of his children, I think only 4 were in their children's life until they reached adulthood, and at least one of them was a single parent because her husband died young. The same great-great grandfathers second wife likewise "lost" a brother that was almost certainly taken into care while she and her older brother were left to fend for themselves as teenagers after being orphaned when their father died after having cared for them alone for a few years after their mother died. My grandmother's mother - married to one of the children of the same great-great grandparents - lost contact with her siblings in her early teens when they were all taken into care when her dad proved unable to deal following her mother's death. While she found a couple of her sisters again later, her dads failure to cope means even now we've not been able to figure out what happened to the rest of her siblings. While divorce is more common, abandonment, be it intentional due to the difficulty of obtaining a divorce, or unintentional (poverty, disease, death), or absence for noble reasons (e.g. going off to earn money to support the family) still left a lot of people raising children on their own in often awful conditions. There's a marked increase in the number of situations like that for each generation further back in my family tree among the people I can track.
• ekianjo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • 0xGod 3y ago
    Both sides have good points. Things could easily be improved to facilitate more child-rearing. Most metro areas should get a bump in salaries and hourly rates. I think 30 to 50 percent to cover inflation is doable. With how poised American infrastructure is for a huge wave of massive investment and upgrades, the economic boom following that will more than justify the increase now to fix what's left of the covid supply chain crunch.
  • dotnet00 3y ago
    Having children when you're rebuilding/are going to your potential death, is a very different circumstance. It's a lot easier to have kids when you have nothing left to lose. Indeed, such ignorance on HN these days.
    • zztop44 3y ago
      > It's a lot easier to have kids when you have nothing left to lose. What does that even mean? I also don’t think “nothing left to lose” was really the attitude of the post-War world and (especially) the US.
      • dotnet00 3y ago
        You're a young male off to fight in either of the most brutal wars in history. This might just be the last time you see your wife, so you have nothing to lose in having a child at that point, as you have a much higher chance of never being able to do so later when things are better. Alternatively you lived in a city reduced to ruins by the war, everything you knew or had is gone and you have no idea when or even if you'll be able to recover. Having a child doesn't involve as much of a concern over whether or not you can give them a better upbringing because things couldn't really get much worse in the first place. Now, on the other hand, if you're talking about post-war, the world was recovering, there were opportunities everywhere, the future was looking more hopeful. You could just have kids and trust that they'd live a more comfortable life than yourself. Nowadays, we're at this awkward point where there's just enough uncertainty and instability in the future, yet not bad enough that people have nothing to lose that people would rather wait or just not have any kids at all.
• lolinder 3y ago
  This is unnecessarily confrontational and inaccurate. According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66%, which is about the same rate that it's been (+/- 3%) since they started tracking in 1964 [0][1]. This isn't restricted to old people either: 49% of 30 to 34 year olds and 58% of 35 to 39 year olds owned a home in Q4 2023 [2]. There are certainly regional differences in housing affordability, but the average American lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. [0] https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html [1] edit since there's some confusion—here's the direct link to the table I'm citing from, entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"—https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx [2] "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023"—https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx
  • voidfunc 3y ago
    HN has a blindness for the vast land area of America that isn't The Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Boston, and a handful of other insanely expensive locations. Home ownership has probably plummeted in those markets (I don't have the data) but it leads to certain types of comments being passed around as fact. The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting.
    • echelon 3y ago
      > The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting. The algorithm has turned (some) people into whiners and doomers. It really sucks to watch them take defeatist attitudes on everything in life. I see lots of these young 20-somethings on Reddit thinking their lives are over. It's absurd. They have their entire lives ahead of them, and all it takes is one break into a career. They even think climate change is going to "kill all of us" before they're elderly. That's not even what the science says. On the topic of having children, though - people aren't having kids because they're choosing to focus on themselves. There are ten times as many forms of entertainment today as there were in the 1980s, and people can endlessly consume content in their hands. You can go glamping at a music festival, post it on Instagram, and hook up with new friends and romantic partners you meet. All incredibly easily. Our culture has become built around experience and consumption. I know people in their 40s that are partying, going to clubs and concerts, doing bar crawls, cruises, visiting abroad, jet setting, and climbing the corporate ladder while living incredibly active lives. They don't want to give up their lifestyle to suddenly have to raise children.
• pie_flavor 3y ago
  That opinion itself is reflective of a bubble. The people not having kids are all well-off; the lower class is still having lots of kids, whether they own houses or not (and most do - the only places unaffordable are the centers of big cities). You drop below 2.0 kids somewhere around the 40th percentile of income, and pass 50% homeownership around the 20th.
  • SamBam 3y ago
    Exactly. Having kids is inversely correlated with income. It's exactly the opposite argument about affordability. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
• thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > You're baffled people aren't having kids? What bubble do you live in? People straight up can't afford housing much less children. This is incoherent; children are not expensive.
  • billyjmc 3y ago
    At minimum, children do come at an opportunity cost. Either you’re geographically constrained to be near family, one of the parents must not work, or you pay very real direct costs for child care.
  • swells34 3y ago
    This is likely the stupidest thing I'll read this week, thank you for that. In what way, exactly, are children not expensive? From some research and napkin math, it looks like $300k, not including opportunity cost (so in reality more like $500k), if everything goes right. Hope there's no medical issues, hope there's no car crashes. How many years of salary is that?
    • bruhbruh78 3y ago
      [flagged]
• deleted 3y ago
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• MattGaiser 3y ago
  I am in a circle of people who absolutely could and my experience (including me personally) matches the GP comment. There are certainly people who cannot afford housing, but the kinds of people I know are people who own detached homes in reasonably large cities all by themselves and things are not that different.
• xeromal 3y ago
  Humans had plenty of children in much worse times. People are not having kids for other reasons: Convenience, infertility, wealth, etc
• caturopath 3y ago
  I think this is very confused. People these days are really rich compared to people in the past who had more kids, poorer people in countries like the US have more kids on average than richer ones, and poorer countries on average have more kids than richer ones. (People don't seem to have fewer kids because they're poor; they seem to have fewer kids because they're rich!) Despite major housing issues, people live in bigger, fancier houses than ever, homeownership rates in the US are higher than most of the history of the US, and homelessness, though tragically common, still only directly affects a tiny minority of people, on the order of a fifth of a percent, which is not the sort of thing that seems very connected to the widespread change to having fewer children.
  • keiferski 3y ago
    Yes this is my read too. It’s largely a cultural problem, not a resource one. The baseline expectations have gotten so high that not have a giant house and the latest electronics means you somehow can’t afford kids.
    • brailsafe 3y ago
      If you're responsible for yourself in either the U.S or Canada, and have built some kind of a life as an adult in a place that isn't right next to where your parents still live, assuming they're still together, then children are an expensive liability rather than necessary and relatively cheap labor used for supplying the rich ones with chocolate. Likewise, access to free in or inexpensive birth control and sex education allows a person to make less risky decisions for longer, rather than popping out 5 kids and figuring it out. If you can figure out a way to afford the liability and it's important to you, great, otherwise it's sort of illogical.
      • keiferski 3y ago
        It’s a liability only if consumerism is your only value. Which for a lot of people, is absolutely the case. And it’s only logical if you only care about your own individual desires. It almost isn’t worth arguing about, though, because the reality is that society is ultimately made up of people that have kids. All the rationalizations in the world won’t change the basic facts of biology.
• pkolaczk 3y ago
  Not owning a house is not a reason people don’t have kids. After WW II the birth rates in Poland were crazy high despite obviously huge problems with housing - often 2 families had to live in one small 2-room apartment (not a house). Now most people own or can afford to rent yet the birthrate plummeted. The primary reason for low birth rate is availability of cheap and effective contraception (and cultural changes that led to most people being ok with using it). Change my mind.
  • v-erne 3y ago
    Isn't this a bit like claiming that main reason of drowning is water? The real questions here is why people given opportunity to not have children jumps at it. My personal opinion is that children are not that great - too much responsibility, too little support from society, too many of them behaves like little psychopaths most of the time (this can be probably cured with strict discipline but stress free upbringing seems to be in vogue). And the things that children "give" in return are rather questionable (especially for people with low emotional needs like me) Most people probably like the "idea" of children but the practical side of having them is mostly boring ungrateful work that takes greater part of you life away and there is inherent risk that it can never end (I do not understand how anyone would not take into considetation the consequnce of having special needs child)
    • pkolaczk 3y ago
      > The real questions here is why people given opportunity to not have children jumps at it. Point taken, but that opportunity was not there until about 60 years ago. I don't think people unwillingness to have kids changed, they didn't have much real choice back then. Well, their willingness to have sex was stronger than willingness to not have kids ;)
  • lukasm 3y ago
    And yet when you ask people how many children they want you get TFL estimate at 2.1-2.4
    • 3y ago
• bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  >Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. Visit an average family in the Midwest with a household income of < $100k/yr that doesn't own a home yet. Ok, but the poster is baffled not about why people aren't having kids, but about why his coworkers aren't having kids. Now since HN is out of touch they poster is probably just as out of touch and you would assume that they worked with people as financially out of touch as they are - therefore: Among people making enough money presumably to afford having kids why no kids?
• anon291 3y ago
  I know many couples in Portland Oregon having multiple kids (four or more) on incomes ranging from 60k-over 200k. Moms stay at home too. You know what they have in common? They're all religious. The lack of children is a cultural thing based on how much you value kids over things. That's basically it. Those who value children have them. Those who don't don't. I don't understand why this is controversial. Look at Israel.
• talldatethrow 3y ago
  Your bubble is distorted too. I'm in the Central Valley of California but I work in the Bay area. The software people aren't having kids and complain a lot about housing and all that. And my central valley friends, installing garage doors, fixing machinery, making cabinets, digging pools, all have multiple kids and their own house.
  • saiya-jin 3y ago
    This is spot on. White collar dev folks whine how life is hard since they can't own their house close to their work, and rest of mankind just chugs along. HN is a massive echo chamber in many topics like Apple and I suspect this is another one.
  • bongodongobob 3y ago
    I'm talking about people who don't currently own a home. Yeah, people who bought a house 5+ years ago are doing fucking amazing because it's doubled in value.
• ssnistfajen 3y ago
  Housing isn't the sole factor in declining birthrates. Every industrialized nation is going through the same phenomenon and not all of them are having housing crises. It's a combination of various associated costs to raising children (housing, early childcare, food, schooling, extracurriculars, hobbies, etc.) that have risen faster than most people's wages. The nuclear family model also significantly diminished the role of parents and other senior relatives in early childcare which would've created significant savings in terms of both time and money. Also, living without children or even a partner at all has become significantly more viable in the past 40+ years or so. It wasn't until 1974 when women in the United States could unconditionally open bank accounts out of their free will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act. To not marry and have children would've practically been a form of ostracization. So many people, especially women, "settled" into marriage and family life simply because there was no other option. I think the decline in birth rates is a fair tradeoff to forcing fewer people into a lifestyle they did not want which would inevitably result in broken families and broken kids. What society needs to figure out is how to decouple productivity from raw human headcount, as well as how to avert potential humanitarian disasters that may occur when the decoupling happens.
  • ImHereToVote 3y ago
    The only economic metric that has a strong correlation to declining birthrates is hours women work for a salary.
  • esperent 3y ago
    > not all of them are having housing crises A lot of them are, actually. I'm Irish, we're having a housing (and general cost of living) crisis. I know Portugal and Germany are too. I don't know about other countries in the EU regarding housing specifically but there's a block wide cost of living crisis going on right now. Life is hard for people in all kinds of ways because of covid, war, climate change. Note: I'm not trying to claim any of this is the cause of declining birth rates, that's beyond my sphere of knowledge. The purpose of my comment is to note that cost of living issues are not unique to the US right now.
• beltsazar 3y ago
  > Edit: the replies - y'all are out of touch. If you're in the minority, maybe you're the one who's out of touch? It's not that they can't afford having children—many of those who are less fortunate than them still have children. It's just that they think the cost of raising children, which likely affects their current lifestyle, is not worth it.
  • navane 3y ago
    If you are in the minority on HN, it's almost more likely you are in the majority outside HN.
  • throw1234651234 3y ago
    Do the math on a 100k income - everyone lives on inheritances. It's fine if you inherit a couple of mill and can live on all of the 100k. If you need to worry about savings - good luck.
  • baq 3y ago
    Spot on - opportunity cost of having kids is way too high for high earner middle class.
• sirpunch 3y ago
  I can attest to this with N=1 datapoint here. My best friend postponed having kids till they could afford a SFH, but kept pushing it further as the supply dwindled and rates shot up (tier-1 city residents). I can imagine how the number of planned kids could be directly proportional to the number of bedrooms a couple can afford to have.
• silisili 3y ago
  Yes they can. People are just too selfish and think of kids as costing lattes and ruining their free time. Believe it or not, kids don't have to be expensive as reports have you believe. They can go to public school, wear hand me downs or walmart clothes, and eat what would have been leftovers. Most coworkers with kids I've spoken with complain about costs of daycare, babysitting, and Montessori schools. We pay for none of those as they aren't necessary. If even one parent works from home, it's a solved problem. If both do not, evaluate the costs. Many times, you actually lose money by both parents working. I have a child and we do fine on one salary. Would love more, but either my aging body or god one has determined that would be decidedly more expensive. ETA: Anyone on the fence who wants a kid - go for it. Don't try to keep up with the Jones' or try to budget them out. Kids are awesome. They're little blank slates who don't need much more than love, attention, education, and sustainance. If you keep waiting for when it's right, it'll never happen.
  • makeitdouble 3y ago
    "it takes a village to raise a kid" Yet the message sent to potential parents is so far from that, I won't blame people foregoing having kids. There's a strong movement pushing for smaller governments and less public and social expenses in general, that directly makes it worse (kids are sick all the time, they need schools, public transportation, libraries, public services in general). You're arguing for giving up on daycare when so many companies are pushing back to office rules. To your point, if a couple is at the point they couldn't afford lattes if they had kids, I don't see them properly raising that kid without a ton of aid, and looking at the comments we usually have here, most will point the finger at them for not being responsible enough instead.
  • vintermann 3y ago
    You are just as selfish as your friends. You just have a different idea about what life you want (and also probably higher income, I bet). Would you have another kid if you knew it would make your current kid significantly worse off? It's the same argument as that, except that you count the spouse as part of the equation. If you make conscious choices to keep having kids even though 1. You don't need them to help on your farm or to support you in your old age, 2. Each additional kid further immiserates your spouse and the older kids aren't you the selfish one?
• poulsbohemian 3y ago
  >The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. But this is always the case... ~20 years ago when I bought my first home, interest rates were close to 8%, it took a big chunk of my income, and we had to move way out to the sticks in order to afford anything. People are always having to make compromises if they want to buy a home, save for retirement, start a business, have kids, and all the other high-risk things that people want to do in order to seek a better life. Yes house prices are higher today than they were 20 years ago -- and incomes aren't necessarily better -- but if someone absolutely wants to buy a home, there will be options and tradeoffs.
  • vander_elst 3y ago
    It seems that the tradeoff is not having kids.
• bozhark 3y ago
  Midwest ain’t the best metric mate
  • bongodongobob 3y ago
    It's better than NYC or SF which HN skews heavily towards.
• epolanski 3y ago
  You're naive if you think that in the richest moment in the world history people are not making children in the richest regions for financial reasons. That's nonsense. Poor people always had kids, still do. What changed is that people aren't able anymore to make sacrifices, huge in time and money for kids.
  • zoidb 3y ago
    I would add to this is that the social pressures for having children have significantly diminished. I see a lot of people commenting on the side that having kids has become more difficult, which there may be some truth to but what people seem to ignore is that it has gotten a lot easier and more enjoyable to be a single person without kids. Society has adapted to this new cohort of childless adults and are catering to them in new ways.
• benja123 3y ago
  You realize the wealthier a society, the fewer kids? It’s 100% a cultural norm issue. I was raised in Canada but have lived in Israel for the past 20 years. The vast majority of my Canadian friends have no kids, and the ones that do have at most 2. In Israel, all of my friends (secular/non-religious) have kids, usually 3 or more. The idea of whether you can or can’t afford a kid does not cross people’s minds. You get married, and you have a kid. If you don’t get married, and you can, you still have a kid. It’s just what’s expected. I have numerous friends who are single and made the choice to have multiple kids via donors. When it is the norm in society, it’s just something you do. I am sure social pressure has an effect. You see your friends having kids, then you want to have kids too, and then your kids become friends with your friends’ kids, and it expands from there. Financially, life in Canada is much easier as a parent when compared to here, but socially, life in Canada as a parent is much harder when I compare it to here. I have 3 kids - for me personally it was the best choice I have ever made, but I accept that I no longer have my own life. I live for my kids and I wouldn’t change it for the world. It probably helps that most of my friends are in the same situation.
• QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
  Unless he is gods gift to salary negotiation, if he can afford kids probably one of the 23 coworkers he has had could afford kids
• Dalewyn 3y ago
  I can afford children but swore to never have them nor marry, for the following reasons: * Life is a hellhole. My children must witness my (and my hypothetical spouse's) deaths; witnessing death is a fucking hellish experience, I motherfucking do not desire to force that experience on anyone let alone my children. * The world will continue. The Earth has spun and travelled around the Sun for time immemorial and will continue to do so regardless of any decisions I make. My existence and any existences I might create are utterly and absolutely pointless in the grand scale of the universe. * The human world (in contrast with the world at large) is a fucking hellhole. I have absolutely no desire to bring new life into this human world and tell them, with a straight face: "Welcome! This is hell I brought you into. You will suffer many tragedies, you will be wronged so many times you won't bother keeping count. No, I can't help you. Have fun." What the hell am I, a sadist? * I have many other activities, dreams, and goals I wish to accomplish that do not and perhaps even run completely counter to having children. Life is short: I only have so many hours left and none I can or will spare for offspring. * I find the idea of compromising my life with a spouse to be a violation of fundamental human rights. Who am I to demand my spouse to bow to my wishes? Who is my spouse for them to demand I bow to their wishes? The answer is noone: I and any hypothetical spouse are noone. All men are born equal, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thusly, I swore to never marry and (also consequently) never have children. I am far too busy with my own life, kindly and sincerely please fuck off. So yes, I can afford children. Many children. No, I won't have children. I can't wait until I am automagically ejected from the marriage market I never even wanted to be a part of.
  • otikik 3y ago
    Hi, your first comment ("Life is a hellhole") makes me think that you don't seem to be in a great place mentally right now. It's definitely your choice, and your decisions, but I would advice to review those views with someone else other than the internet. Whatever works for you - a friend, a therapist, a family member or a priest. Consider this: despite life being "a hellhole full of tragedies", hopefully you don't resent your parents for giving birth to you? My view is that life is both: full of tragedies and hardship, yes. But also full of wonders and joy. It's a full package, you seem to be only seeing one half of it. And to be clear: children are the same. A package, with joy and love and laugther but also hard work and tiredness and effort. Hopefully this comment does not sound condescending to you, I am really trying to help. Have a very nice day.
• elzbardico 3y ago
  Poor people always existed and they always had kids. I wouldn't be here replying you if that was not the case.
• lm28469 3y ago
  > 15 engineers I'm pretty sure engineers can still afford kids, it's just very time consuming and you'll have to settle for less in term of vacations/neighbourhood/purchasing power/carrier/&c. But yes, most people can't afford having kids that's a given
• angra_mainyu 3y ago
  Affordability has rarely been a concern for having kids. I grew up poor and people never "thought" about affording kids, just had them and figured things out along the way. It seems it's a self-filtering mechanism in the upper classes, that put all kinds stops before having kids (e.g not ready/mature enough yet, not financially stable, etc) and usually end up having one at most.
  • hoseja 3y ago
    If you were to have children in affordable manner nowadays you would soon find yourself without said children and in prison possibly.
  • askonomm 3y ago
    Ask your parents, did they enjoy raising you without any money? My mom certainly did not enjoy working 2 jobs to bring me up in this world, and while she loves me, I'm pretty sure she would not do it again if she could do it all over. So while yes, affordability has rarely been a concern, perhaps people are more educated now and realize what having kids would mean for their life, and how much worse it would make their life? And instead of living life for the purpose of being some child making vessels, they want to actually ... I don't know, LIVE?
    • randomdata 3y ago
      > My mom certainly did not enjoy working 2 jobs to bring me up in this world Rich world problems, though. In poorer countries and our poorer past, you'd have been working alongside her as she wouldn't be able to do it all on her own. Poor people have little choice but to bring children into this world. They would not survive without them. Opting to not have children is a luxury. > perhaps people are more educated now Or less educated. We seem to have come to believe that children are porcelain dolls that will break if they have to lift the lightest of fingers before they turn 18, even though there is no basis to that. It's just a cultural display.
      • angra_mainyu 3y ago
• saiya-jin 3y ago
  Ah yes the good ol' trope of putting house ownership as basic human right, ideally just for me and right after the buy I expect the price to jump to 3x. If you don't have one, you are such a loser, a failure, how can you look at yourself in the mirror? Completely idiotic approach of cargo-culting previous generations without a pinch of logic. There are highly developed countries (as in overall higher than US, say here in Switzerland) where this mindset is absent long term. Thus most population lives in rent for whole life, nobody is bothered by it, and generally Swiss are among the happiest nations in the world, consistently. That isn't saying child births here are booming, in contrary, but that has absolutely nothing to do with home ownership and being priced out from owning homes. People simply grok how difficult raising even 2 children well is (as in by far the most difficult project you will ever do, spread over 20-25 years of consistent draining efforts with no guarantee of success even with best effort, while you also need to put some good effort into marriage too), society not really helping that much these days, and decide against it. Don't blame them, as Bill Burr says there are simply too many people. Rather lets lift whole mankind from poverty and the topic of population explosion will vanish on its own.
• wolvesechoes 3y ago
  There is just one, single reason for the decline of births in so-called developed or developing countries - women emancipation. Anything else is simply a cope from people that are unable to acknowledge the fact that everything has a price.
  • rmholt 3y ago
    Even if it was true, put this way, the argument is insanely hostile to women, basically saying "Your freedom means we, as a society, are declining".
    • wolvesechoes 3y ago
      You are presuming intentions that are absent from my comment. And it doesn't state any "argument". I am not saying there that it is wrong to give women such freedom, nor that it is right. Maybe there is an alternative cultural setting where women emancipation doesn't bear such consequences. Maybe not. Maybe it is an unavoidable result of our societal progress. Or maybe a flourishing of the society cannot, and shouldn't, be measured in births-to-deaths ratio. These things I consider unknown. But the cause of the current state of affairs is as stated.
• aiisdoomed 3y ago
  You’d be surprised how disconnected from reality people are. There’s talk in every western country about population aging and housing affordability yet people cant see either. Office workers are out of the child making equation and they are the least aware of the world outside. Being constantly gaslight and ordered around does that to you. But the issue is that the trend is to obliterate all types of income sources outside office cattle farming and fewer people will afford the luxury of a family and friends. The frog is warm but will boil surely.
• everdrive 3y ago
  Some of this is cultural. In the past, people would cram 12 kids (yes literally 12) into a 1,200 sq/ft rowhome. God knows where they all slept. I'm not suggesting this was good, people used to have kids and and have far less space.
• krippe 3y ago
  It's the same in Sweden. My friends and I are all a couple of years passed the age our parents were when they had us. Out of 7 people who have SO's in my social circle, 0 have children. Why? Because they simply don't have the room. The housing market in Stockholm is insane, and even though most earn above average (most are in tech) they can only afford tiny 1BR apartments. Trying to raise a kid in such a place would be impossible. Unless you want to move out into cheaper areas, that these days are plagued by high-crime and is no real environment for a kid anyway, you're SoL. Sure, one could move away from Stockholm into smaller towns up north, but then your career will suffer. Also not something most are willing to consider just as they've gotten a foothold in their respective careers. The next couple of decades are going to be real interesting, and I don't mean that in a good way...
  • nemo44x 3y ago
    What I don't understand is that native people who make a good income rationalize that they can't afford kids but yet in the same country there are many non-native people that earn considerably less that continue have children at extremely high birthrates. So why does the group that earns a lot of money claim they are incapable of supporting a family and the group that earns very little actually support a large family, in the same country?
    • navane 3y ago
      Maybe the non-native people that earn less see their future brighter, whereas the native group with good income sees their future darker. When you come from nothing its easier to give your kids a better future than you had. Some animals don't breed in captivity. Some human populations also didn't breed because they were in captivity. Even though people have it better number wise, it's still possible to feel trapped.
• christophilus 3y ago
  My parents had three kids while living on a single salary that put us below into the poverty line for the first half of my childhood. I had a very happy childhood. Everything I had (even my underwear!) was a handmedown. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s possible. It’s a matter of priorities. I’m glad my parents made the hard choices they did.
  • siva7 3y ago
    The point is why should parents risk lowering their living standard under the poverty line?
  • tedajax 3y ago
    The point is people watched their parents struggle to raise kids and decide they aren't going to do that to themselves or their hypothetical kids. There is more to do in a life than work and raise children.
    • TuringNYC 3y ago
      This comment is spot on IMHO -- yes, of course it is possible. But it isnt desirable for many of us who went thru it. I similarly grew up at the poverty line as my parents got crushed by double-digit inflation. Based on personal experience, I didnt want the same for my kids -- so we have 2 though we'd love to have 4.
    • nemo44x 3y ago
      Every single parent I'd wager that made those sacrifices and raised their family would tell you it was the best thing they ever did and that they'd do it again. If you've never been a parent you can't possibly understand it at all.
      • 2024throwaway 3y ago
        I am currently a parent and still don’t understand it. Why risk one medical bill ruining everyone’s life? They aren’t that cute.
• tecleandor 3y ago
  I don't know exactly how is it on the US (also, AFAIK there's a huge variance of income and housing pricing all around the country), but here on Spain housing is getting worse and worse and worse. 2011 to 2020 ownership rate has fell from 82,6 to 73,9% in the general population, and from 69,3 to 36,1% in under 35yo. Also people is expending more than 40% of their salary to rent [0] And those are numbers from 2020 (ownership) and 2022 (rental), but I guess that today, specially on big cities, that's way, way worse. I just checked my neighborhood prices (in Madrid) and, since late 2021 when I rented my current apartment, prices have raised +30%, and lots of posting are now for "temporary rentals" of less than one year. That's a model thought for touristic apartments that offer way less protection to the tenant (they can raise prices at will), less stability (they can kick you out no notice) and allows landlords to avoid housing rental laws (for repair, maintenance, etc.). So it used to be "AirBnBs around me raise housing prices", and now it's "You can only rent AirBnBs". 0: https://www.bankinter.com/blog/finanzas-personales/porcentaje-espanoles-vivienda-propiedad
• dotancohen 3y ago
  The US isn't in as good a position as it was e.g. twenty years ago. But it is still great compared to all of human history and even compared to most of the world today. And all throughout the ages, and all over the world, people are reproducing.
• justworkout 3y ago
  Home ownership and prices have no effect on people having kids. Income does. You'll find loads of kids in low income areas but far fewer in middle income areas. Everyone online complains about wealth being the reason they won't have kids, but it's not the case. Once people make one step up in their career, they want to make another and kids become an impediment. No matter the country, you'll find higher numbers of kids when people (and especially women) are deprived of education and work opportunities. Then you also have eccentric billionaires that have a dozen kids, but they're statistically irrelevant. If you want families to have kids, cut wages, don't let women work, cram them into undesirable homes, and most importantly, ignore people who say they'd have kids if only they made a little more money. They won't stop once they get a taste of better living. They'll be very stressed out people, but they'll have kids.
• nemo44x 3y ago
  If you don't have money you're more likely to have kids. Tons of poor people have tons of kids and they manage.
• al_borland 3y ago
  My sister, in the Midwest, has 3 kids. I assume the family makes < $100k/year, I’d be shocked if they made more than that. Money seems tight, but they get by. They have a home on a couple acres of land (in the middle of nowhere). I haven’t helped to provide any cousins, so they don’t have any. Money is not the constraint for me. I’d probably have a better chance of having kids if I had less money, as it would imply I focused on building relationships instead of a career. Lots of people without a lot of money have kids. They value having a family over other things and make it work.
• JeremyNT 3y ago
  The December Atlantic article on this topic (recently discussed) says the presence of this effect does not correlate with class [0]: > Although the average number of lateral relatives varies across race and class groups in the U.S., the cousin decline is either imminent or already happening across all of them. My suspicion is that once the standard of living reaches a certain baseline level (which e.g. even many "poor" people in the US hit) reproduction takes a back seat. This is clearly in part due to an increased availability of birth control and the ability for women to enter the workforce and make these choices for themselves, which wasn't even an option under more patriarchal societies. I think there's something more subtle there, too. There's so much more to do now for young people in developed countries, even those of relatively modest economic means. This might manifest as furthering one's career, or in pursuit of hobbies, or in travel, or in consumption of entertainment products, or in higher education... or any number of ways. Child rearing takes many of these options off the table, or it curtails and constrains them severely. It seems like having fewer children is a pretty reasonable response in a world that is more enjoyable and potentially personally rewarding than any has ever been before. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/12/cousin-relationships-fertility-rate/676892/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/12/cousin-re...
• usaar333 3y ago
  > The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. Owning a house isn't a pre-req to have a kid
• HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Yeah, I don't get the replies. Even getting priced out of renting: https://apnews.com/article/affordable-housing-rent-eviction-price-harvard-congress-f5411012e10fa78d0257c137e60c1be3 https://apnews.com/article/affordable-housing-rent-eviction-...
• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Housing cost per annual income ratio is actually quite favorable in the US compared to elsewhere.
• jimberlage 3y ago
  This is absolutely correct. Let’s assume a hypothetical 30 year old who bought a house at the absolute peak of 30 year fixed interest rates, 16.64%. The median US home price was $70,400. Assume 20% down. Let’s also assume a hypothetical 30 year old buying a house in 2023. 30 year fixed rate is 7.00%. The median US home price is $417,700. Assume 20% down. Looking up inflation, a 1981 dollar is 3.37 2023 dollars. The 1981 homebuyer pays 57% of the 2023 homebuyer’s down payment, and only pays 19% more each month. And that’s cherry-picking the absolute worst time to buy for that generation. Down payment 1981 (inflation adj.): $47,440.60 Monthly payment 1981 (inflation adj.): $2,650.50 Down payment 2023: $83,540.00 Monthly payment 2023: $2,223.17
• merpnderp 3y ago
  Kids aren't that expensive. I have a friend in the midwest with 5 kids and his family income is about $60k. They have 3 cars, own their home and go on vacation a few times a year. But they never eat out, and have a strict budget. People complaining about money and kids and meanwhile their Great Depression era ancestors are looking at them with unending shame.
• SamBam 3y ago
  Given that birth rates even in the US are inversely correlated with income, this causative statement is nonsensical. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
• aidenn0 3y ago
  Anecdotal response; also, at 43, I may be older than others in this discussion, though many of my cohort have only recently started to have kids. If you're only 30 (or 31 like GP), you'll need to wait and see who will have kids. My friend with the most kids (5) lives in the Midwest had a household income of well under $100k/yr when kid #5 was born (he's a cop, she worked irregular hours because 5 kids). Now that they are older, she might work more and he has been promoted, so it's possible they are above $100k/yr, but if so, it's not much above that. Prior to kids, they bought a fixer-upper and made it livable over the course of several months of days-off. Granted he had several advantages here: he worked construction jobs to pay his way through college (in-state tuition was laughably low in the early aughts), and his father was a finish carpenter, so the know-how was available, and he graduated with less than $10k in debt.
• FalconSensei 3y ago
  Exactly. And also: childcare. Here in Canada, you may have to wait 4~5 years to get childcare, and it's very expensive (and you have to pay to enter the wailist). People even joke that your kid is going to be working by the time they get a spot
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• dang 3y ago
  Please don't start flamewars on HN. This was a doozy. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39341055.
  • bongodongobob 3y ago
    I can't help how others respond. No flame war intended.
    • dang 3y ago
      I believe you, but we have to go by effects, not intent. If you post swipes like "What bubble do you live in?" (which is already against the site guidelines, btw) on a divisive topic like this, then the odds of a flamewar are high and you're responsible for starting it—the same way you would be responsible for a wildfire if you dropped lit matches in a dry forest, whether you intended a wildfire or not. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • bongodongobob 3y ago
        Fair enough, heard.
      • dangisapos 3y ago
        [dead]
      • gofreddygo 3y ago
        Dang, I don't know how this community would resist imploding without you. Your clarity of communication and considerate restraint are deeply appreciated. I mean you could have a canned answer for such threads, but I liked and learned from how you handled this. Thank you, again :)