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1/3 of women < 44 have no children and the trend is rising. What is causing it?
- Finnucane 2y agoRise of fascism? Housing crisis? Looming environmental disasters? Unaffordable health care, education, while wealthy people shoot themselves into space?
- polski-g 2y agoAre any of these conditions present in North Korea and Iran?
- clipsy 2y agoDo women have a choice in North Korea or Iran?
- g8oz 2y agoThey did in North Korea until 2015. They did in Iran until 2021. In both cases access to abortions and contraceptives was restricted at those junctures due to the governments panicking over falling birth rates.
- skhunted 2y agoYes. There is food scarcity in North Korea and the political and economic environment there is not conducive to pursuing happiness. Probably people in rural North Korea want children for labor purposes but feeding them might be a burden. In Iran there are water shortages, drought, high inflation, and a regime that is despised by a large majority of the people.
- Finnucane 2y agoMisogynistic authoritarian rule, and environmental degradation, for sure.
- smartdude123 2y ago[flagged]
- nataliste 2y agoWhich is another way to say "People spend too much time online doomscrolling."
- JojoFatsani 2y agoInteresting that all the replies to the tweet are from men
- PlunderBunny 2y agoYeah. If only there was some way to talk to woman and ask them.
- silverquiet 2y agoI could make all kinds of jokes about dating (mostly at my expense) with this, but to be a bit serious, I wonder if people know why they do things. Ultimately, what are children for?
- PlunderBunny 2y agoFair point, but what's the alternative - asking woman why they didn't have children, and then coming up with an alternative theory?
- silverquiet 2y agoI mostly just accept not really knowing, though I do have some ideas.
- tuatoru 2y agoSome people are actually undertaking this radically novel and risky procedure. It appears that women say they can't find a suitable partner. The reason for that, in turn, is that men are now in the minority in university, and young women (23 - 33) have higher yearly incomes on average than young men. The few men whom women do find suitable are deluged with offers from women, and see no reason to commit to any one woman. 1. Chris Williamson's Youtube channel has many videos digging away at the problem, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAmQ7Tcrh6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAmQ7Tcrh6A 2. Random NYT opinion piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/opinion/marriage-women-men-dating.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/opinion/marriage-women-me...
- rossdavidh 2y agoIt seems like, if you actually want to investigate this question, you would want to add data on: - how does this vary by country - how does this vary by income (relative to median for that country) - how does this vary by religion Probably other things, but at least those. This graph doesn't even say what country (or group of countries) it is about, as far as I can tell?
- g8oz 2y ago>> how does this vary by religion Also interesting is how does it vary within a religion. i.e compare the birth rate of Turkey and Iran to that of Mali. My view is that income and median education dominate other factors.
- tuatoru 2y ago[flagged]
- red-iron-pine 2y agoIt is not just the united states and its a well documented phenomenon everywhere. S. Korea and Japan aren't having kids, either; they're looking at demographic collapse. China and Russia aren't having kids, either, and the EU isn't far behind. The richer and more educated the country the fewer kids, basically.
- vinyl7 2y agoCareer over family
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BrainInAJar 2y agoother than to ensure a cheap exploitable workforce, who cares? Why is it a bad thing?
- bigyikes 2y agoThe economy is predicated on future growth, so if growth slows due to lack of workforce, bad things may happen. Social programs become insolvent. It becomes difficult to take care of an aging population. (Not sure what makes you say “cheap and exploitable”, are future generations somehow more exploitable than current or past generations?)
- knighthack 2y agoWhich goes back to the argument on constant growth. Why is there such a need for that?
- defrost 2y agoPoor predicate in the long term. If earth based human population continues to grow bad things happen. Basing success on always being able to find a fresh mark perhaps isn't sustainable.
- secstate 2y agoI remember back when I'd spit the growth-for-growth-sake-is-cancer thing. But the reality is, unless you've spent time in a low/no-growth economy, how on Earth can you speculate on what is good or bad about it? All the last three generations of humans have ever know is unbridled, fantastical growth. And being pessimistic about continued growth is the definition of literal ignorance of what a no-growth or negative growth society looks like. I'm not saying I have all the answers, or that we can keep this game going forever. But let's not pretend everything will be better when we finally stop having future generations to build our cars or take care of us in our old age. And no, robots wont do it for us (maybe cars, but damn, I hope I don't have robots taking care of me in my dotage).
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- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spectra72 2y agoTurns out, actually having to give birth is kind of a drag, even in the best of conditions, and women who realize they have a choice in the matter are more and more likely to nope right out of it. Or at least nope out at levels less than the current 2.1 children needed for replacement levels.
- clipsy 2y agoDon't forget if you have life-threatening complications in certain states the local populace might try to sacrifice you to their god.
- spectra72 2y agoEven in highly liberal/socialistic countries with low levels of religion women are opting out. It all boils down to choice. And women are choosing "No thanks" in high numbers even in countries where you'd think most of the barriers are quite low.
- clipsy 2y agoTo be clear, I wasn't disagreeing -- just adding another (admittedly US-centric) factor in the decision-making process!
- red-iron-pine 2y agoyeah but the question is why are they choosing "no thanks"? being pregnant and giving birth aren't easy, but we literally evolved specifically do be able to do that -- hence the big hips and other body dimorphism, etc. it's a function of stress, economics, and loss of social cohesion via things like "the third place" and large family groups. all of the people I know having kids live in small towns and have tons of relatives nearby, while the doctors and office slaves living in a tech-bro city on the other side of the country from their family struggle to have a cat.
- silverquiet 2y agoPassing a head through an opening too small for the task doesn't look appealing at all - I remember an account from Annie Lowery about a doctor cutting open her perineum as part of her delivery. > The sense of being eviscerated, the room going Technicolor. I did not know I could feel so much pain. > The extra anesthesia kicked in, so I keeled over in the bed as the doctor explained that he’d performed an episiotomy while wresting the baby out. I was insufficiently anesthetized at the time. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. [0] And the alternative is getting gutted and sown back up. But I can't help but suspect that it's the time pressure that really makes it infeasible. We can only juggle so much and it takes a lot of time to keep up with the demands of modern life. Lack of religion/purpose is also probably huge. With all the reasons not to have kids, you probably need a good reason to, but maybe there isn't one. [0]https://archive.is/ZsHIH#selection-1173.59-1173.281 https://archive.is/ZsHIH#selection-1173.59-1173.281
- tennisflyi 2y agoUltimately, not attractive enough in whatever category. For some reason, you MAANGs are oblivious to how desirable those company names and salaries are to women... Just too demure, I guess.
- piva00 2y agoFor some reason my friends in other careers like the arts, culinary, hospitality, janitors, construction are getting happily married and starting families. Being attractive doesn't demand money, it demands you to be an interesting, loyal, caring person to someone else. I'd guess that believing in this worldview where money is an obstacle for finding someone is in itself a filter for potential matches.
- bun_terminator 2y agoFor us, there's just too much money taken off our wages to guarantee long-term safety and stability for even a single child. And wage increases barely touch that: The leftover amount is almost constant over a factor of 2 in income increase.
- xethos 2y agoYour phrasing implies you blame high tax rates, but I'd first attack this from the opposite end: the market for housing has not been leaving enough in your pocket, with capital (whether morgage lenders with interest rates, or, more likely, landlords) soaking up any excess gained by your pay increase
- bun_terminator 2y agoBoth taxes and rent take their part, but taxes several times more. So yes I blame taxes because that's almost the entire problem. Pay increases not resulting in more income is an effect of a highly complex tax structure that essentially takes of as much as possible without people going on a killing spree.
- piva00 2y agoBlaming taxes while not blaming the capture of most of the value from increased productivity by companies is a bit dissonant. Taxes help to fund society as a whole, corporate profits skyrocketing is not helping society as a whole.
- bun_terminator 2y agoThat's fair I guess. But I never worked for any huge company with huge profits. In fact they're small enough that I know pretty well that they're not making much profit at all. But this argument might hold more weight in bigger companies, which don't really pay that much better. Regardless, most of my taxes are not used to improve society. A bug chunk is sent far away, another chunk is used to fund the system itself. It would be trivial (!) to chop off half of the tax without a net detriment to society.
- JSDevOps 2y ago[flagged]
- benterix 2y agoI believe the question is asked backwards. We should be asking why people decide to have kids in the first place. And it is not that easy to answer this question.
- fileeditview 2y ago[flagged]
- benterix 2y agoI do but the answer is not obvious, and when I talk to my friends it's often surprising, too. There is some complex dynamics at play, with varying levels of expectations on the part of both partners, often having quite different ideas as to why they decided to have kids (heck, this even changes in time post factum!), and what would make them have another one now.
- Jensson 2y agoYou do have to convince the ones who don't have kids, not the ones who do.
- punyearthling 2y agoMy reasons: - it's painful - it's expensive - it's a drag - culture war stuff (who wants to deal with school issues, medical issues, community issues, etc.?)