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The problem is not cities, never has been. Almost everything in modern society is anti-family, by design, the design of cities is maybe the one rare exception.

The problem is not cities, never has been. Almost everything in modern society is anti-family, by design, the design of cities is maybe the one rare exception. You can design cities for families all you want, but if you keep lying to people and telling them having children is bad, and it's better to live alone, then they won't do it. Not to mention crime and taking money from families and paying people who are tax leeches.

ty6853 1y ago
The fertility rate has relatively plummeted pretty much anywhere with a socialized retirement system. Why would you go through the trouble of kids when you can just mostly offload the time and cost of that on someone else then tax those kids when they're grown for your own retirement and get about the same size slice as the person that actually raised them?
- pmg101 1y ago
  > Why would you... Joy!
  - ty6853 1y ago
    IIRC studies on joy of children, there is pretty marginal gains in satisfaction with having children beyond one, except a weird bimodal blip somewhere beyond 3 that trends with a small segment of society that really loves pumping out kids.
- streptomycin 1y ago
  To be fair, it's also plummeted pretty much anywhere without a socialized retirement system too.
  - ty6853 1y ago
    On average I'm not sure it's as 'relatively' deep. Definitely merits further study. Most the places I can think of without a social security system had drops but not the inverted pyramids we're seeing in the west.
- hermannj314 1y ago
  Most Americans don't have the mathematical rigor to understand a rent vs. buy calculator, but I love the idea that every American without kids understands how to calculate the present value of a deferred annuity against the cost of raising a kid and have made the multi-decade commitment to forgo family life simply as a result of that calculation and knowing that they will come out ahead in the end.
  - ty6853 1y ago
    And yet in times century ago every simple farmer understood it. The principle is simple, watching your childless neighbors relatively suffer is not hard to understand. That calculus totally changes if the childless neighbor can just send armed men to collect the neighbor child's income and redistribute it to themselves.
    - _Algernon_ 1y ago
      Doubt this is the explanation. Fertility has declined because easy access to contraception has completely altered the trade-off of having kids. Before you could essentially be celibate and not have kids or you could be sexually active and eventually end up with kids. People want to fuck more than they don't want kids. Contraception (especially the pill), has eliminated this trade-off. Now people can have their cake and eat it too.
      - ty6853 1y ago
        Fertility has probably declined due to both. The west and places with socialized systems in Asia though have seen inverted population pyramids.
- fluidcruft 1y ago
  Ah yes. In the '90s and early '00s the decline in fertility was laid at the feet of feminism and reproductive choice. And now that Roe v Wade is gone it's because of Social Security. After Social Security is destroyed I wonder what will be blamed next? Income taxes or loss of the gold standard, probably.
  - thrance 1y ago
    They'll come for women's right to vote next. You know, in the name of the West.
JimDabell 1y ago
> Almost everything in modern society is anti-family, by design Are you using “modern society” as a synonym for whichever country you live in? There are countries who directly tell their citizens that having kids is good and offer them financial incentives to do so. For instance: > PM Lee urges Singaporeans to have more children, and to do so earlier — https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/pm-lee-urges-singaporeans-to-have-more-children-and-to-do-so-earlier https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/pm-lee-urges... > Nearly $7 billion will be spent on marriage and parenthood initiatives in financial year 2026, up from over $4 billion in 2020. — https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/7b-to-be-spent-on-marriage-and-parenthood-initiatives-in-fy2026 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/7b-to-be-spe...
- artyom 1y ago
  I mostly agree with the original comment. Most of the western world is anti-family, with rare exceptions (e.g. Finland) with policies that nobody is willing to imitate. And even with great child-raising policies, Finland has a fertility rate as bad as the rest. Problem is always money. Why society is going to subsidize 2 year of paternity leaves for everyone? Better and easier to complain about "kids nowadays". It's not just telling people what having kids is or is not, it's that the MONEY spent on family promotion is laughable. Countries with those policies are just putting a bandaid. People is already NOT having children. The reason all this is "mostly okay anyway" is that everyone normalized being selfish. So money and time and resources are spent on oneself, and that's okay, who's going to require anything different from the government? Kids are tomorrow's most valuable infrastructure asset. We're just poisoning the water supply.
  - Juliate 1y ago
    > Kids are tomorrow's most valuable infrastructure asset. We're just poisoning the water supply. What tomorrow is there with +4°C in 2100, and what happens in the meantime? (greenhouse gases emissions are not slowing down, we're closer to 2100 than we are to the invention of the transistor).
    - 1y ago
gessha 1y ago
Is society anti-family by design when fertility is down in all of the western world except Israel? Many of those countries have pro-family initiatives and the result is the same. My thinking is that growth-based economics is eating itself.

ty6853 1y ago

The fertility rate has relatively plummeted pretty much anywhere with a socialized retirement system. Why would you go through the trouble of kids when you can just mostly offload the time and cost of that on someone else then tax those kids when they're grown for your own retirement and get about the same size slice as the person that actually raised them?

pmg101 1y ago
> Why would you... Joy!
- ty6853 1y ago
  IIRC studies on joy of children, there is pretty marginal gains in satisfaction with having children beyond one, except a weird bimodal blip somewhere beyond 3 that trends with a small segment of society that really loves pumping out kids.
streptomycin 1y ago
To be fair, it's also plummeted pretty much anywhere without a socialized retirement system too.
- ty6853 1y ago
  On average I'm not sure it's as 'relatively' deep. Definitely merits further study. Most the places I can think of without a social security system had drops but not the inverted pyramids we're seeing in the west.
hermannj314 1y ago
Most Americans don't have the mathematical rigor to understand a rent vs. buy calculator, but I love the idea that every American without kids understands how to calculate the present value of a deferred annuity against the cost of raising a kid and have made the multi-decade commitment to forgo family life simply as a result of that calculation and knowing that they will come out ahead in the end.
- ty6853 1y ago
  And yet in times century ago every simple farmer understood it. The principle is simple, watching your childless neighbors relatively suffer is not hard to understand. That calculus totally changes if the childless neighbor can just send armed men to collect the neighbor child's income and redistribute it to themselves.
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    Doubt this is the explanation. Fertility has declined because easy access to contraception has completely altered the trade-off of having kids. Before you could essentially be celibate and not have kids or you could be sexually active and eventually end up with kids. People want to fuck more than they don't want kids. Contraception (especially the pill), has eliminated this trade-off. Now people can have their cake and eat it too.
    - ty6853 1y ago
      Fertility has probably declined due to both. The west and places with socialized systems in Asia though have seen inverted population pyramids.
fluidcruft 1y ago
Ah yes. In the '90s and early '00s the decline in fertility was laid at the feet of feminism and reproductive choice. And now that Roe v Wade is gone it's because of Social Security. After Social Security is destroyed I wonder what will be blamed next? Income taxes or loss of the gold standard, probably.
- thrance 1y ago
  They'll come for women's right to vote next. You know, in the name of the West.

JimDabell 1y ago

> Almost everything in modern society is anti-family, by design Are you using “modern society” as a synonym for whichever country you live in? There are countries who directly tell their citizens that having kids is good and offer them financial incentives to do so. For instance: > PM Lee urges Singaporeans to have more children, and to do so earlier — https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/pm-lee-urges-singaporeans-to-have-more-children-and-to-do-so-earlier https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/pm-lee-urges... > Nearly $7 billion will be spent on marriage and parenthood initiatives in financial year 2026, up from over $4 billion in 2020. — https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/7b-to-be-spent-on-marriage-and-parenthood-initiatives-in-fy2026 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/7b-to-be-spe...

artyom 1y ago
I mostly agree with the original comment. Most of the western world is anti-family, with rare exceptions (e.g. Finland) with policies that nobody is willing to imitate. And even with great child-raising policies, Finland has a fertility rate as bad as the rest. Problem is always money. Why society is going to subsidize 2 year of paternity leaves for everyone? Better and easier to complain about "kids nowadays". It's not just telling people what having kids is or is not, it's that the MONEY spent on family promotion is laughable. Countries with those policies are just putting a bandaid. People is already NOT having children. The reason all this is "mostly okay anyway" is that everyone normalized being selfish. So money and time and resources are spent on oneself, and that's okay, who's going to require anything different from the government? Kids are tomorrow's most valuable infrastructure asset. We're just poisoning the water supply.
- Juliate 1y ago
  > Kids are tomorrow's most valuable infrastructure asset. We're just poisoning the water supply. What tomorrow is there with +4°C in 2100, and what happens in the meantime? (greenhouse gases emissions are not slowing down, we're closer to 2100 than we are to the invention of the transistor).
  - 1y ago

gessha 1y ago

Is society anti-family by design when fertility is down in all of the western world except Israel? Many of those countries have pro-family initiatives and the result is the same. My thinking is that growth-based economics is eating itself.