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If you look at China, it appears that young men there need to make exceptionally large and expensive sacrifices, like borrowing money and buying an expensive ap

If you look at China, it appears that young men there need to make exceptionally large and expensive sacrifices, like borrowing money and buying an expensive apartment, just to be allowed into the dating pool. Does that equalise the total investment into conceiving a baby? Is China better off with birth rates as the result? "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively.

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tivert 2y ago
> "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively. Not really, they've got the equipment for it (e.g. uteri and mammary glands). I think it would be impossible to "equalize" the cost without doing some extreme and bizarre things (e.g. have some kind of arbitrary Weregild-type thing to "equalize" the cost). A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  Both of these comments are only reacting to the financial and physical costs of child rearing. Obviously humans with penises cannot bear children and it's unreasonable to suggest they should be made to. Similarly, the fact that those men in China are expected to attain so much debt simply to enter the dating pool is also a legitimate problem that needs addressing. However neither of those things reflect the costs of motherhood, which are a lot more expansive: * Mothers are still by and large the "default" entity for all child care, with it being notable for men to take on that role. Men are regularly praised for "babysitting the kids for mom" even though if you think about that for like, 30 seconds, you realize how insane it is. Of course dad watches the kids too, in any kind of equitable household, that would be expected. * Mothers are also by default responsible for almost all child-adjacent logistics. School, activities, medical appointments, friend visits, school trips, sports, immunization scheduling.... Like, think about all the annoying logistical bullshit in life that you have to get done just for you, and then imagine that you have to do it all twice, for yourself, and for a secondary third party who oftentimes doesn't appreciate it either.
  - tivert 2y ago
    >> A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality. I think you should read that a little more expansively that the things I explicitly commented on. Some examples of ideology: "children should be parented with high intensity", "men and women should be doing the exact same things in a family in exactly equal proportions with no specialization", "a family should consist of two capitalism-participting income-earners," etc. I suspect fixing the issues you outlined with the fixes you're implying wouldn't actually do anything to increase birthrates.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I think they were making a more general point that the article may be taking a overly simplistic view of the "costs of child-rearing". If a mother feeds and cares for children, that can be viewed as a cost of children to her. If a man works to feed and house those same children, surely that is a cost of children to me. I suspect part of the problem is a generation of people raised with just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous, with life viewed through lenses of cost, profit and risk instead of joy, experience, and sentimentalism.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > I suspect part of the problem is a generation of people raised with just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous, with life viewed through lenses of cost, profit and risk instead of joy, experience, and sentimentalism. IMHO, I think that's part of the problem, but I feel that it's more than "just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous." That knowledge definitely interferes with the ability to analyze the problem, but I don't think it's the main or only thing going on. You could probably add something like "individualism" to the left hand side and something like "duty" to the right to get closer.

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tivert 2y ago

> "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively. Not really, they've got the equipment for it (e.g. uteri and mammary glands). I think it would be impossible to "equalize" the cost without doing some extreme and bizarre things (e.g. have some kind of arbitrary Weregild-type thing to "equalize" the cost). A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Both of these comments are only reacting to the financial and physical costs of child rearing. Obviously humans with penises cannot bear children and it's unreasonable to suggest they should be made to. Similarly, the fact that those men in China are expected to attain so much debt simply to enter the dating pool is also a legitimate problem that needs addressing. However neither of those things reflect the costs of motherhood, which are a lot more expansive: * Mothers are still by and large the "default" entity for all child care, with it being notable for men to take on that role. Men are regularly praised for "babysitting the kids for mom" even though if you think about that for like, 30 seconds, you realize how insane it is. Of course dad watches the kids too, in any kind of equitable household, that would be expected. * Mothers are also by default responsible for almost all child-adjacent logistics. School, activities, medical appointments, friend visits, school trips, sports, immunization scheduling.... Like, think about all the annoying logistical bullshit in life that you have to get done just for you, and then imagine that you have to do it all twice, for yourself, and for a secondary third party who oftentimes doesn't appreciate it either.
- tivert 2y ago
  >> A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality. I think you should read that a little more expansively that the things I explicitly commented on. Some examples of ideology: "children should be parented with high intensity", "men and women should be doing the exact same things in a family in exactly equal proportions with no specialization", "a family should consist of two capitalism-participting income-earners," etc. I suspect fixing the issues you outlined with the fixes you're implying wouldn't actually do anything to increase birthrates.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
I think they were making a more general point that the article may be taking a overly simplistic view of the "costs of child-rearing". If a mother feeds and cares for children, that can be viewed as a cost of children to her. If a man works to feed and house those same children, surely that is a cost of children to me. I suspect part of the problem is a generation of people raised with just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous, with life viewed through lenses of cost, profit and risk instead of joy, experience, and sentimentalism.
- tivert 2y ago
  > I suspect part of the problem is a generation of people raised with just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous, with life viewed through lenses of cost, profit and risk instead of joy, experience, and sentimentalism. IMHO, I think that's part of the problem, but I feel that it's more than "just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous." That knowledge definitely interferes with the ability to analyze the problem, but I don't think it's the main or only thing going on. You could probably add something like "individualism" to the left hand side and something like "duty" to the right to get closer.