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> It’s a liability only if consumerism is your only value. It's a liability if it's a liability. A consumerist liability is buying a brand new car with a loan

> It’s a liability only if consumerism is your only value. It's a liability if it's a liability. A consumerist liability is buying a brand new car with a loan if it seems like my income might disappear before the payments do. Not knowing how long you'll be able to keep paying rent in the place you've spent your entire adult life is just a logical consideration. Though people are obviously choosing to be consumers too, often it's just the basics that seem out of reach. However, if you've always wanted kids and it's always been your biggest priority, and there's never been any contravening forces that would make you question that, and you've lucked out and found someone who's completely on board with that, and your income has been stable, and your expenses are manageable, and your parents are nearby and still together, then sure you're choosing to consoom over having kids.

keiferski 3y ago
Your last paragraph kind of highlights the point of my previous comment though, which is that the vast majority of people who have children today and who had children in the past had few or none of those things, and were absolutely fine with it. This is a modern hyper optimization of, “I can’t have kids unless they have the absolute perfect life situation.” At the end of the day, it is a cultural “problem” that potential parents are unwilling to have children. If anything, the material costs of entertainment, food, education, etc. are magnitudes lower today than a century ago, and yet a century ago it was normal to have 3-4 children.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  > At the end of the day, it is a cultural “problem” that potential parents are unwilling to have children. If anything, the material costs of entertainment, food, education, etc. are magnitudes lower today than a century ago, and yet a century ago it was normal to have 3-4 children. Curiously, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child was from 1924. Yeah, it's easier to have kids if you care less about their wellbeing, and if one of the ways of dealing with the expense is sending them to work in a factory.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I'm not sure how to respond to comments like this, because they obviously aren't made in good faith. Potential parents today aren't choosing between "having kids and sending them to slave away in a factory" and "perfect childhood with every toy imaginable and no financial need." The contemporary Western world is immensely wealthy on a material and informational basis, orders of magnitude beyond even a half century ago. I don't think people understand this at any level, mostly because they don't know much history.
    - dale_glass 3y ago
      The point is that we drastically increased our standards along with the wealth. And I'd say it's fair to say that at this point the standards increased more than the wealth for a fair amount of people.
    - neutronicus 3y ago
      It's snarky, but I think it's in good faith. People used to value the labor of their children. At the dystopian tail-end of it, they valued selling it on the market, which is what's being referenced. But, generally, my impression from light reading is people throughout history thought of children as progressing pretty quickly into helpfulness. Now, though, people have jobs children can't help with, ever, which keep them too busy to project-manage children into helpfulness around the house. So people have them exclusively for their company (which, again my impression from light reading, has not been at all the historical norm).
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    This is crazy. Kids born today will have the best material, educational, medical wellbeing in the whole human history.
- kelnos 3y ago
  A century ago it was also normal to have two pairs of parents living near you to help with childcare. I don't know how common it is today, but it's certainly much less common than it was a century ago. I've decided not to have kids, but quite a few people I know have been having them, and there's a stark difference in costs between the friends who have family nearby and those who don't. Several new parents I know even decided to move to be near at least one set of parents, at least for the first few years of their kids' lives. I don't really know anyone who has decided to not have kids primarily because of cost, though. But I don't know if the child-free people I know are typical.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    It is still pretty common for parents to live nearby: > Over all, the median distance Americans live from their mother is 18 miles, and only 20 percent live more than a couple of hours’ drive from their parents. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f... Although "a couple hours drive" is probably too far to help with daily childcare activities. And in the past the grandparents were likely in the same building or across the street.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      I mean, 20% is the difference between the current US fertility rate (1.64) and a rate above 2. Obviously the 20% of the population more than 2 hours from their parents isn't abstaining from children absolutely, but it's the right order of magnitude to be a significant factor.
- prawn 3y ago
  I think you're on the right track. We collectively have an inflated sense of what qualifies as being in an appropriate financial/lifestyle position to have children (I know, because I do it too), but it's not necessarily the same as what qualified decades back. If you have an extra bedroom to fit bunks and can afford a bit more food, public schooling is fairly affordable and a lot of the rest is optional. We just got the bills for our kids' school year and it is nothing dramatic. The extra-curricular stuff (music, sport, etc) is what adds up. Holidays, especially overseas, are expensive. Interior design fit-outs for showy rooms are expensive. Growing up, I didn't have a console until late teens. My children are 5-11yo and we would have 5+ consoles in the house. Last week, my mother (born in the 50s) was saying that she can't recall having an actual toy of her own while growing up. Now many of us plan to have a bedroom per child, study nooks, a second living room and/or parents' retreat, a dressing room, en suites, pool, and so on.
- macNchz 3y ago
  > This is a modern hyper optimization of, “I can’t have kids unless they have the absolute perfect life situation.” I think, in America at least, this is being amplified by a general gut perception that the middle class is shrinking (which does indeed seem to be happening). Even people who aren’t reading about or following the phenomenon can feel it to some degree: as middle incomes have become less common, there are a lot more high earners and more low earners. Maintaining a high income is not a given, so the perceived risk of failure to remain in the upper-middle class now includes not just falling back to a comfortable middle class existence, but falling further down the ladder, to a place in a growing underclass with a starkly lower quality of life and future prospects. This creates a feedback cycle: people have this gut feeling that if they don’t compete for high end jobs to live in expensive areas with good schools their kids won’t get into a good college, which is a requirement to maintain membership in this new, enlarged, hypercompetitive upper-middle class. Competition for these houses, colleges, and jobs goes through the roof. Life decisions become more stressful because the perceived stakes are higher. This in turn contributes to choices around kids: will you be able to navigate this such that your kids live a comparably comfortable life to the one you have had? How many kids can you do that for? What will life be like for a kid who for whatever reason can’t be a programmer/doctor/lawyer/etc?
- brailsafe 3y ago
  No, I think you're mischaracterizing my argument. I didn't even mention schooling, I didn't mention entertainment, I didn't mention anything material, but I also didn't articulate the thought very well in retrospect. There's nothing perfect, it's just a roof in the place you've established yourself, and eating, perhaps along with staying mentally and physically fit. It's just a basic question of whether someone's circumstances can be stretched further; in many cases they can, but in many more they can't, and if whatever reason they didn't spend the entire first part of their life aligning all the variables necessary to handle the basics, and getting lucky, then it seems more probable to be a disaster than not. It's not about perfection, it's really high level stuff. First, get a long-term partner who fits certain criteria. Lets say attraction is last on that list because we've decided not to be perfect, we've decided to be like the previous generation who didn't care about their health or mental well-being at all and get the first person we have sex with pregnant, and take it to completion. Halfway through the pregnancy we realize we're totally incompatible, can't even equitably share space with the other person, and actually they're not even remotely invested in improving as a human. That's fine, it'll work out in the end, ignore your burgeoning depression. Next step, get a place together. It's not looking good, but ignore that, it's for the sacrifice you've decided to make right now for some reason. You remember that your parents had you in a small 1 bedroom apartment that was probably crap, but they only paid $300 a month for. You currently live in a modest studio that's $1500 a month, and an upgrade to a 1 bedroom would go up to $2500. Maybe we get lucky and get a rustic basement for $1750. There are co-ops, but they have thousands of people ahead of you in line. Of course, there are always small towns in rural areas, so maybe we can move there, maybe get a job in the sawmill. It's all just silly. If you're in a position to, and want to have kids, then you do, but otherwise there's no intrinsic reason to and getting there could be a tenuous personal decision to introduce a whole lot more strain in probably an already strained position. If you're in the former camp, great. You still live close to parents probably, have had a stable job for a while that's not going away, there's not a ton of competition for rentals or whatever, and have a great supportive relationship that isn't volatile. You might be surprised, but that can be tough to come by. If you can pull it off you can pull it off.

keiferski 3y ago

Your last paragraph kind of highlights the point of my previous comment though, which is that the vast majority of people who have children today and who had children in the past had few or none of those things, and were absolutely fine with it. This is a modern hyper optimization of, “I can’t have kids unless they have the absolute perfect life situation.” At the end of the day, it is a cultural “problem” that potential parents are unwilling to have children. If anything, the material costs of entertainment, food, education, etc. are magnitudes lower today than a century ago, and yet a century ago it was normal to have 3-4 children.

dale_glass 3y ago
> At the end of the day, it is a cultural “problem” that potential parents are unwilling to have children. If anything, the material costs of entertainment, food, education, etc. are magnitudes lower today than a century ago, and yet a century ago it was normal to have 3-4 children. Curiously, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child was from 1924. Yeah, it's easier to have kids if you care less about their wellbeing, and if one of the ways of dealing with the expense is sending them to work in a factory.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I'm not sure how to respond to comments like this, because they obviously aren't made in good faith. Potential parents today aren't choosing between "having kids and sending them to slave away in a factory" and "perfect childhood with every toy imaginable and no financial need." The contemporary Western world is immensely wealthy on a material and informational basis, orders of magnitude beyond even a half century ago. I don't think people understand this at any level, mostly because they don't know much history.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    The point is that we drastically increased our standards along with the wealth. And I'd say it's fair to say that at this point the standards increased more than the wealth for a fair amount of people.
  - neutronicus 3y ago
    It's snarky, but I think it's in good faith. People used to value the labor of their children. At the dystopian tail-end of it, they valued selling it on the market, which is what's being referenced. But, generally, my impression from light reading is people throughout history thought of children as progressing pretty quickly into helpfulness. Now, though, people have jobs children can't help with, ever, which keep them too busy to project-manage children into helpfulness around the house. So people have them exclusively for their company (which, again my impression from light reading, has not been at all the historical norm).
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  This is crazy. Kids born today will have the best material, educational, medical wellbeing in the whole human history.
kelnos 3y ago
A century ago it was also normal to have two pairs of parents living near you to help with childcare. I don't know how common it is today, but it's certainly much less common than it was a century ago. I've decided not to have kids, but quite a few people I know have been having them, and there's a stark difference in costs between the friends who have family nearby and those who don't. Several new parents I know even decided to move to be near at least one set of parents, at least for the first few years of their kids' lives. I don't really know anyone who has decided to not have kids primarily because of cost, though. But I don't know if the child-free people I know are typical.
- keiferski 3y ago
  It is still pretty common for parents to live nearby: > Over all, the median distance Americans live from their mother is 18 miles, and only 20 percent live more than a couple of hours’ drive from their parents. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f... Although "a couple hours drive" is probably too far to help with daily childcare activities. And in the past the grandparents were likely in the same building or across the street.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    I mean, 20% is the difference between the current US fertility rate (1.64) and a rate above 2. Obviously the 20% of the population more than 2 hours from their parents isn't abstaining from children absolutely, but it's the right order of magnitude to be a significant factor.
prawn 3y ago
I think you're on the right track. We collectively have an inflated sense of what qualifies as being in an appropriate financial/lifestyle position to have children (I know, because I do it too), but it's not necessarily the same as what qualified decades back. If you have an extra bedroom to fit bunks and can afford a bit more food, public schooling is fairly affordable and a lot of the rest is optional. We just got the bills for our kids' school year and it is nothing dramatic. The extra-curricular stuff (music, sport, etc) is what adds up. Holidays, especially overseas, are expensive. Interior design fit-outs for showy rooms are expensive. Growing up, I didn't have a console until late teens. My children are 5-11yo and we would have 5+ consoles in the house. Last week, my mother (born in the 50s) was saying that she can't recall having an actual toy of her own while growing up. Now many of us plan to have a bedroom per child, study nooks, a second living room and/or parents' retreat, a dressing room, en suites, pool, and so on.
macNchz 3y ago
> This is a modern hyper optimization of, “I can’t have kids unless they have the absolute perfect life situation.” I think, in America at least, this is being amplified by a general gut perception that the middle class is shrinking (which does indeed seem to be happening). Even people who aren’t reading about or following the phenomenon can feel it to some degree: as middle incomes have become less common, there are a lot more high earners and more low earners. Maintaining a high income is not a given, so the perceived risk of failure to remain in the upper-middle class now includes not just falling back to a comfortable middle class existence, but falling further down the ladder, to a place in a growing underclass with a starkly lower quality of life and future prospects. This creates a feedback cycle: people have this gut feeling that if they don’t compete for high end jobs to live in expensive areas with good schools their kids won’t get into a good college, which is a requirement to maintain membership in this new, enlarged, hypercompetitive upper-middle class. Competition for these houses, colleges, and jobs goes through the roof. Life decisions become more stressful because the perceived stakes are higher. This in turn contributes to choices around kids: will you be able to navigate this such that your kids live a comparably comfortable life to the one you have had? How many kids can you do that for? What will life be like for a kid who for whatever reason can’t be a programmer/doctor/lawyer/etc?
brailsafe 3y ago
No, I think you're mischaracterizing my argument. I didn't even mention schooling, I didn't mention entertainment, I didn't mention anything material, but I also didn't articulate the thought very well in retrospect. There's nothing perfect, it's just a roof in the place you've established yourself, and eating, perhaps along with staying mentally and physically fit. It's just a basic question of whether someone's circumstances can be stretched further; in many cases they can, but in many more they can't, and if whatever reason they didn't spend the entire first part of their life aligning all the variables necessary to handle the basics, and getting lucky, then it seems more probable to be a disaster than not. It's not about perfection, it's really high level stuff. First, get a long-term partner who fits certain criteria. Lets say attraction is last on that list because we've decided not to be perfect, we've decided to be like the previous generation who didn't care about their health or mental well-being at all and get the first person we have sex with pregnant, and take it to completion. Halfway through the pregnancy we realize we're totally incompatible, can't even equitably share space with the other person, and actually they're not even remotely invested in improving as a human. That's fine, it'll work out in the end, ignore your burgeoning depression. Next step, get a place together. It's not looking good, but ignore that, it's for the sacrifice you've decided to make right now for some reason. You remember that your parents had you in a small 1 bedroom apartment that was probably crap, but they only paid $300 a month for. You currently live in a modest studio that's $1500 a month, and an upgrade to a 1 bedroom would go up to $2500. Maybe we get lucky and get a rustic basement for $1750. There are co-ops, but they have thousands of people ahead of you in line. Of course, there are always small towns in rural areas, so maybe we can move there, maybe get a job in the sawmill. It's all just silly. If you're in a position to, and want to have kids, then you do, but otherwise there's no intrinsic reason to and getting there could be a tenuous personal decision to introduce a whole lot more strain in probably an already strained position. If you're in the former camp, great. You still live close to parents probably, have had a stable job for a while that's not going away, there's not a ton of competition for rentals or whatever, and have a great supportive relationship that isn't volatile. You might be surprised, but that can be tough to come by. If you can pull it off you can pull it off.