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I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for peopl

I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.

Spivak 2y ago
And treat parenting as something other than a passion project you work on nights and weekends.
nkzd 2y ago
I am not sure about this one. In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.
- bbqfog 2y ago
  Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!
  - Asraelite 2y ago
    Try asking that after spending a while living in a tenement building with 3 people per room and frequent outbreaks of dysentery and smallpox.
    - bbqfog 2y ago
      People still live like this today.
      - cowgoesmoo 2y ago
        extremely rare in countries with falling birth rates
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    We take so much for granted. Living in a world without electricity, medicine, food scarcity, lack of safety net. Family didn't offer as much support as it appears. Average kids are working farms rich children are sent away to be raised. The social bonds of the modern world still exist in the same places as the past. It starts with the church.. so if you crave the social connections you can still go to church to find it.
    - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
      You almost had a coherent point until the last sentence. I'll take my social bonds without the side-order of dogma, thanks.
      - ipaddr 2y ago
        What bonds people in the past is religious dogma. We removed it and we wonder why our social bonds are so weak. I'm not suggesting we go back but we have nothing to replace it. The one thing a church did was welcome in everyone. We don't have places like that anymore.
        brendoelfrendo 2y ago
        I guess I have to tell my local card shop to stop welcoming everyone on Commander night, because you're only allowed to do that if you're a church.
        ipaddr 2y ago
        Welcoming people with money who buy cards as a promotion to sell goods. It's not a place to hold a wedding or funeral. You can't go inside and sit down without someone trying to sell you something. Some form of community can happen at a card shop. I use to hang around one when a was younger. Also got kicked out every now and then for hanging out too much.
        brendoelfrendo 2y ago
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  People didn’t have a choice back then. So the two options now are: “force people to have kids” or “make life better for people so they want kids”. I’d like to think we’ve evolved enough as a society to choose the later option.
  - Ray20 2y ago
    There is no later option, actually. No matter how good life would be - people won't have more children. Prosperity in the context of fertility matters only in relative values, not in absolute values. People have a lot of children not when they are wealthy, but when they are wealthier than others, and so it always be minority, no matter how good life are.
- brendoelfrendo 2y ago
  Quality of life was terrible, but some things were still easier. Most importantly, that terrible quality of life was cheap enough that your kids could probably support you in your old age. Medical care wasn't so advanced, which is cheaper, but also means you had a good chance of dying younger or of a condition we could cure today. Housing was cheaper but also worse back then. Investments weren't accessible to the vast majority of people and "retirement" as a concept didn't really exist for the lower classes except as an idea that you would probably be too old to effectively do your job someday. Nowadays, your kids probably can't afford to support you into your old age, and you probably don't have a pension, which means making more money now so that you don't have to work until you die. You have a lot more options for a higher quality of life, but they tend to require that you prioritize money over a family unless you are either in the privileged position of being able to afford both or poor enough that it doesn't matter.
- ativzzz 2y ago
  I imagine that birth control as well as the giant array of entertainment options available to us other than sex contributes to modern fertility Why do poorer people have more kids? Sex is free, birth control and netflix is not
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    Poor people are also more religious, and in the age of birth control,religions that don't explicitly require their adherents to procreate will have far fewer followers than those that do after just a few generations.
- plantwallshoe 2y ago
  Kids used to be seen as a way to increase quality of life. They were free labor and a retirement plan all rolled into one. They still are seen as a way to increase quality of life but in a more vibey sort of way.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue. not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously
beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
It's not really a problem you can pick around at the edges. You have to take some big swings to try to resolve it. Politicians, businesses, and the entire voting public, need to take a hard look at the real things they can do that will have an actual effect. 4-day workweek is a big one.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  >entire voting public, Won't happen explicitly, The masses are short sighted. Might happen implicitly through a series of co-incidental events but never by design.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  Second item: housing needs to be a bad investment. Both for individuals and corporate.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Land (and rent seeking) need to be a bad investment. Building housing (and building anything in general, whether it be housing, businesses, families, etc) should be a good investment. Right now, with earned income tax, we do the exact opposite. We punish the people that do things, and reward the rent seekers with tax breaks (1031 exchange/low land value tax rates/senior citizen discounts/etc). The proof is in the pudding, everyone wants to become a rent seeker, and this is what society will look like if that is the case.
RiverCrochet 2y ago
I had an interesting discussion with my nephew about this post. He angers me with the way he talks about stuff, but I consider it an exercise in mental fortitude. Allow me to share his absolutely crazy and unreasonable thoughts on this: "Nobody really wants more people except certain religious sects, and that is only because it allows them to use sexuality to control people. Most modern capitalists would favor automation precisely because it takes unreliable people out of the capitalistic equation and makes conversion of real property to wealth and power easier. The only reason why we're hearing about fertility and birth rate in the last few years is because certain religious organizations are scared they're going to end up losing their tax-free status and leveraging current social crises to make sure they stay relevant by any means necessary. I'm betting they have armies of incels ensnared in their fundamentalist ideologies getting tax-free money to shitpost on the various social networks." I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem. Anyway I disagree with his premise because COVID-19 did really expose weaknesses in the supply chain and global world order and showed that depending completely on foreign entities can make you non-resilient in the face of disaster. So we do need strong families and all that stuff that's being talked about, it's a real actual need. And I do think making life better for people is the way to go, but we need to fix whatever decided that landlords should be getting most of the non-rich people's money first.
- ativzzz 2y ago
  He's not totally wrong, just replace "Religious organizations" with "Governments" and "tax-free status" with "solders and workers"
  - beepbooptheory 2y ago
    Yes, and the basic idea that while a "modern" capitalist might want automation from a productivity point of view, they still need some consumers at the other end to buy their stuff!
  - stjo 2y ago
    Also old people. They need younger people to support them, like grow their food, fix their houses, etc. But given that I plan on growing old, as I hope you do too, we should make sure the generations after us are capable of taking care of us.
orangecat 2y ago
It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should spend basically all your disposable time and income on your children, which means expensive daycare, travel sports (gotta start working on the college applications in grade school), and private schools (or "good" "public" schools gated by living in a super-expensive area). And even if you can avoid all that, colleges are very good at figuring out how much money you have and declaring that to be the tuition. As a high-earning childless person myself, I'll freely acknowledge that I should have been paying significantly higher taxes in order to benefit my counterparts who did have kids. Although it would be a challenge to do that redistribution in a way that doesn't just get captured by daycare and college.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  It was actually just last month that I saw one of these falling birthrate articles actually acknowledge that many people just don't want kids, it was in the NY Times too I'm glad we are finally getting representation on that instead of all these social science studies contorting themselves to come to a child-aspiring default that couples are somehow failing to reach https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/well/family/grandparent-grandchild-childfree.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/well/family/grandparent-g...
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Even people who do want kids frequently don't want many of them. Even back in the old days, a lot of people didn't have kids; not everyone actually got married. But people who did get married had lots more kids, so they more than made up for all the people who didn't. (Don't forget, women frequently died in childbirth.) They didn't have reliable birth control, so women didn't have much choice about how many kids they'd have. These days, people can choose, and many women are happy to stop after 1 or 2 kids. Going through childbirth is, by many accounts, very difficult and not that much fun. All the pro-natalists (generally men) seem to completely dismiss actual women's feelings on this matter for some reason. Anyway, when you have a society where a bunch of people aren't having kids, and the ones who are are only having 1-2, sometimes 3, the overall average is going to be well under 2, which isn't enough to maintain the population level. As I've said many times before in these discussions online, societies need to come up with a new model, because obviously the old one isn't working, and it isn't going to come back.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people Financial incentives for giving birth have been around in some countries for decades. In France it's called "prime à la naissance". This is on top of delivery being almost free.
refurb 2y ago
I'm skeptical that falling birth rates have much to do with the demands of a dual working household. Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents. Yet birth rates haven't really budged. I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased. 75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids. By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble". Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports. One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.
BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
So many comments just focus on DINK being selfish but there are good reasons to not have children and I agree there needs to be better incentives, and barriers removed too. Here are just a few reasons to not have children that may not have to do purely with selfishness. Many of these may not come up in casual conversation. It is easier to look selfish and say you prefer to keep the money and spend it on yourself for fun than going in the details of things like: - "not wanting to do that to your body" can be more than concerns about appearance. Even if survival rates for mothers is much better, there are still plenty severe injuries and side effects to deal with. Plus among my relatives, I have yet to find a woman who didn't suffer from medical violence during her pregnancy or when giving birth. This wasn't talked about among women until they were pregnant not so long ago, understandably knowing what to expect can make it much less appealing. - same thing with expectations about what parenting is like. Parents are more open about struggles, or regret. Even if they don't regret their kids a good number I know said if they could go back, though wouldn't have their kids even if they love them. Add to this social pressure to parent a certain way, non parents being quick to judge etc. - some folks dont want kids because they don't think they can afford it despite having two incomes, or consider that their income would severely drop if one parent has to stop working to care for the kids, making it unaffordable. They want to give the best to their kids, so they delay forever or accept they won't ever be in a good enough place. - some people wouldn't be good parents and know it. I've talked to enough childfree women, and many felt obliged to have kids but didn't because their own mothers were resentful parents, which resulted in a traumatic childhood. - some want kids to care for them when they're old but see elders being left to fend for themselves or forgotten in abusive retirement homes - they may decide even with kids there's no guarantee so why bother? - some maybe tried and couldn't conceive until they found it was too late, or couldn't afford medical assistance, or lost a child during pregnancy and couldn't bear to try again. - some may not think their genes are something they should pass on, or don't feel the need to pass on their own genes. - Some may have cared for sibling/cousins/nephews and know they wouldn't make good full time parents but would be ok helping others as part of "the village". Being a DINK also has disadvantages, like constantly being expected to pick up colleagues workload when they have parenting demands during work hours, not getting nearly as many benefits (at least where i work), feeling like your free time is a free for all for anyone to take outside work because you don't have kids, so it's assumed that you have nothing going on in life. Like, feel free to ask and I can help but you don't have to be so callous about it. I see it can be hard to have compassion for each other, if each thing the other should just deal with the consequences of their decisions. I read several posts pitching DINKs against parents over income distribution. If anything, it should be all of us parents and non parents against a system that favours a handful of extremely wealthy people. ps: also let's try to make parent's lives better instead of saying DINK have it too good. Surely we can work to make everyone equally happy instead of making everyone equally miserable...

Spivak 2y ago

And treat parenting as something other than a passion project you work on nights and weekends.

nkzd 2y ago

I am not sure about this one. In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.

bbqfog 2y ago
Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!
- Asraelite 2y ago
  Try asking that after spending a while living in a tenement building with 3 people per room and frequent outbreaks of dysentery and smallpox.
  - bbqfog 2y ago
    People still live like this today.
    - cowgoesmoo 2y ago
      extremely rare in countries with falling birth rates
- ipaddr 2y ago
  We take so much for granted. Living in a world without electricity, medicine, food scarcity, lack of safety net. Family didn't offer as much support as it appears. Average kids are working farms rich children are sent away to be raised. The social bonds of the modern world still exist in the same places as the past. It starts with the church.. so if you crave the social connections you can still go to church to find it.
  - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
    You almost had a coherent point until the last sentence. I'll take my social bonds without the side-order of dogma, thanks.
    - ipaddr 2y ago
      What bonds people in the past is religious dogma. We removed it and we wonder why our social bonds are so weak. I'm not suggesting we go back but we have nothing to replace it. The one thing a church did was welcome in everyone. We don't have places like that anymore.
      - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
        I guess I have to tell my local card shop to stop welcoming everyone on Commander night, because you're only allowed to do that if you're a church.
        ipaddr 2y ago
        Welcoming people with money who buy cards as a promotion to sell goods. It's not a place to hold a wedding or funeral. You can't go inside and sit down without someone trying to sell you something. Some form of community can happen at a card shop. I use to hang around one when a was younger. Also got kicked out every now and then for hanging out too much.
        brendoelfrendo 2y ago
yoyohello13 2y ago
People didn’t have a choice back then. So the two options now are: “force people to have kids” or “make life better for people so they want kids”. I’d like to think we’ve evolved enough as a society to choose the later option.
- Ray20 2y ago
  There is no later option, actually. No matter how good life would be - people won't have more children. Prosperity in the context of fertility matters only in relative values, not in absolute values. People have a lot of children not when they are wealthy, but when they are wealthier than others, and so it always be minority, no matter how good life are.
brendoelfrendo 2y ago
Quality of life was terrible, but some things were still easier. Most importantly, that terrible quality of life was cheap enough that your kids could probably support you in your old age. Medical care wasn't so advanced, which is cheaper, but also means you had a good chance of dying younger or of a condition we could cure today. Housing was cheaper but also worse back then. Investments weren't accessible to the vast majority of people and "retirement" as a concept didn't really exist for the lower classes except as an idea that you would probably be too old to effectively do your job someday. Nowadays, your kids probably can't afford to support you into your old age, and you probably don't have a pension, which means making more money now so that you don't have to work until you die. You have a lot more options for a higher quality of life, but they tend to require that you prioritize money over a family unless you are either in the privileged position of being able to afford both or poor enough that it doesn't matter.
ativzzz 2y ago
I imagine that birth control as well as the giant array of entertainment options available to us other than sex contributes to modern fertility Why do poorer people have more kids? Sex is free, birth control and netflix is not
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  Poor people are also more religious, and in the age of birth control,religions that don't explicitly require their adherents to procreate will have far fewer followers than those that do after just a few generations.
plantwallshoe 2y ago
Kids used to be seen as a way to increase quality of life. They were free labor and a retirement plan all rolled into one. They still are seen as a way to increase quality of life but in a more vibey sort of way.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue. not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago

It's not really a problem you can pick around at the edges. You have to take some big swings to try to resolve it. Politicians, businesses, and the entire voting public, need to take a hard look at the real things they can do that will have an actual effect. 4-day workweek is a big one.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>entire voting public, Won't happen explicitly, The masses are short sighted. Might happen implicitly through a series of co-incidental events but never by design.
colechristensen 2y ago
Second item: housing needs to be a bad investment. Both for individuals and corporate.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Land (and rent seeking) need to be a bad investment. Building housing (and building anything in general, whether it be housing, businesses, families, etc) should be a good investment. Right now, with earned income tax, we do the exact opposite. We punish the people that do things, and reward the rent seekers with tax breaks (1031 exchange/low land value tax rates/senior citizen discounts/etc). The proof is in the pudding, everyone wants to become a rent seeker, and this is what society will look like if that is the case.

RiverCrochet 2y ago

I had an interesting discussion with my nephew about this post. He angers me with the way he talks about stuff, but I consider it an exercise in mental fortitude. Allow me to share his absolutely crazy and unreasonable thoughts on this: "Nobody really wants more people except certain religious sects, and that is only because it allows them to use sexuality to control people. Most modern capitalists would favor automation precisely because it takes unreliable people out of the capitalistic equation and makes conversion of real property to wealth and power easier. The only reason why we're hearing about fertility and birth rate in the last few years is because certain religious organizations are scared they're going to end up losing their tax-free status and leveraging current social crises to make sure they stay relevant by any means necessary. I'm betting they have armies of incels ensnared in their fundamentalist ideologies getting tax-free money to shitpost on the various social networks." I cut him off right there. I think he was drinking, and I haven't talked to him since. I'm considering having him committed because he acts very strange. He may have a drug problem. Anyway I disagree with his premise because COVID-19 did really expose weaknesses in the supply chain and global world order and showed that depending completely on foreign entities can make you non-resilient in the face of disaster. So we do need strong families and all that stuff that's being talked about, it's a real actual need. And I do think making life better for people is the way to go, but we need to fix whatever decided that landlords should be getting most of the non-rich people's money first.

ativzzz 2y ago
He's not totally wrong, just replace "Religious organizations" with "Governments" and "tax-free status" with "solders and workers"
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  Yes, and the basic idea that while a "modern" capitalist might want automation from a productivity point of view, they still need some consumers at the other end to buy their stuff!
- stjo 2y ago
  Also old people. They need younger people to support them, like grow their food, fix their houses, etc. But given that I plan on growing old, as I hope you do too, we should make sure the generations after us are capable of taking care of us.

orangecat 2y ago

It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should spend basically all your disposable time and income on your children, which means expensive daycare, travel sports (gotta start working on the college applications in grade school), and private schools (or "good" "public" schools gated by living in a super-expensive area). And even if you can avoid all that, colleges are very good at figuring out how much money you have and declaring that to be the tuition. As a high-earning childless person myself, I'll freely acknowledge that I should have been paying significantly higher taxes in order to benefit my counterparts who did have kids. Although it would be a challenge to do that redistribution in a way that doesn't just get captured by daycare and college.

yieldcrv 2y ago
It was actually just last month that I saw one of these falling birthrate articles actually acknowledge that many people just don't want kids, it was in the NY Times too I'm glad we are finally getting representation on that instead of all these social science studies contorting themselves to come to a child-aspiring default that couples are somehow failing to reach https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/well/family/grandparent-grandchild-childfree.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/well/family/grandparent-g...
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Even people who do want kids frequently don't want many of them. Even back in the old days, a lot of people didn't have kids; not everyone actually got married. But people who did get married had lots more kids, so they more than made up for all the people who didn't. (Don't forget, women frequently died in childbirth.) They didn't have reliable birth control, so women didn't have much choice about how many kids they'd have. These days, people can choose, and many women are happy to stop after 1 or 2 kids. Going through childbirth is, by many accounts, very difficult and not that much fun. All the pro-natalists (generally men) seem to completely dismiss actual women's feelings on this matter for some reason. Anyway, when you have a society where a bunch of people aren't having kids, and the ones who are are only having 1-2, sometimes 3, the overall average is going to be well under 2, which isn't enough to maintain the population level. As I've said many times before in these discussions online, societies need to come up with a new model, because obviously the old one isn't working, and it isn't going to come back.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people Financial incentives for giving birth have been around in some countries for decades. In France it's called "prime à la naissance". This is on top of delivery being almost free.

refurb 2y ago

I'm skeptical that falling birth rates have much to do with the demands of a dual working household. Look at Europe which has significant maternity and paternity leave, subsidized daycare and free college. Lots and lots of support for young parents. Yet birth rates haven't really budged. I think it has more to do with the expectation of how much effort to raise a kid has drastically increased. 75 years ago, you'd pump out 5 kids and they'd be independent quite young. By 4-5 years old it was "go find something to do". As long as the kid wasn't failing school, grades didn't matter. If the kid was involved in school sports, they made their own way to events. Parents didn't attend regularly. By the time they were 7-8, they could help with the younger kids. By the time your kids was a 8-10, it was pretty much "keep em fed and out of trouble". Today, expectations are way, way higher. Parents worry about what elementary school their kids get into. After school academic and sports activities start super young. Parents want to attend the big events. Then high school and it time to grind. Tutors, SAT prep, college tours, etc, etc. Minimal chores because that would interfere with school and sports. One kid today is equal to the effort of 3-4 kids 75 years ago.

BehindBlueEyes 2y ago

So many comments just focus on DINK being selfish but there are good reasons to not have children and I agree there needs to be better incentives, and barriers removed too. Here are just a few reasons to not have children that may not have to do purely with selfishness. Many of these may not come up in casual conversation. It is easier to look selfish and say you prefer to keep the money and spend it on yourself for fun than going in the details of things like: - "not wanting to do that to your body" can be more than concerns about appearance. Even if survival rates for mothers is much better, there are still plenty severe injuries and side effects to deal with. Plus among my relatives, I have yet to find a woman who didn't suffer from medical violence during her pregnancy or when giving birth. This wasn't talked about among women until they were pregnant not so long ago, understandably knowing what to expect can make it much less appealing. - same thing with expectations about what parenting is like. Parents are more open about struggles, or regret. Even if they don't regret their kids a good number I know said if they could go back, though wouldn't have their kids even if they love them. Add to this social pressure to parent a certain way, non parents being quick to judge etc. - some folks dont want kids because they don't think they can afford it despite having two incomes, or consider that their income would severely drop if one parent has to stop working to care for the kids, making it unaffordable. They want to give the best to their kids, so they delay forever or accept they won't ever be in a good enough place. - some people wouldn't be good parents and know it. I've talked to enough childfree women, and many felt obliged to have kids but didn't because their own mothers were resentful parents, which resulted in a traumatic childhood. - some want kids to care for them when they're old but see elders being left to fend for themselves or forgotten in abusive retirement homes - they may decide even with kids there's no guarantee so why bother? - some maybe tried and couldn't conceive until they found it was too late, or couldn't afford medical assistance, or lost a child during pregnancy and couldn't bear to try again. - some may not think their genes are something they should pass on, or don't feel the need to pass on their own genes. - Some may have cared for sibling/cousins/nephews and know they wouldn't make good full time parents but would be ok helping others as part of "the village". Being a DINK also has disadvantages, like constantly being expected to pick up colleagues workload when they have parenting demands during work hours, not getting nearly as many benefits (at least where i work), feeling like your free time is a free for all for anyone to take outside work because you don't have kids, so it's assumed that you have nothing going on in life. Like, feel free to ask and I can help but you don't have to be so callous about it. I see it can be hard to have compassion for each other, if each thing the other should just deal with the consequences of their decisions. I read several posts pitching DINKs against parents over income distribution. If anything, it should be all of us parents and non parents against a system that favours a handful of extremely wealthy people. ps: also let's try to make parent's lives better instead of saying DINK have it too good. Surely we can work to make everyone equally happy instead of making everyone equally miserable...