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It occurs to me that Efilists don't need to do much of anything. Normies (us) are making parenting more untenable every year. My parents (and their gen) p

• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• greatquux 1y ago
  It's true, though I try not to do this, I really try. But it's so easy for some kids (like my 11-year old firstborn) to just go play Roblox or Pokemon or watch stupid shorts on YouTube unless I'm enforcing some activity for him. And yeah I have screen time restrictions. It's a constant battle with him. We spend quality time with him for sure, and the taekwondo and drum lessons are great extra activities. But he only has one best friend he has regular hanging out time with, and one neighbor kid he knows that he plays with due to less people around us having kids. Family has spread out too, also due to needing to have dual incomes and car culture. So yeah all these contribute to the birth rate going down, but it's not so much parents fault entirely as it is the modern world's.
• mschuster91 1y ago
  > Free-ranging was eradicated by car culture and trespassing culture. Add on top of that the disappearance of shopping malls, arcade centers and other "third places". The game arcades went during my parents' generation. My generation, we had electronics stores that had game consoles where one could play some car race game or whatnot against a friend. Today's youth? They got to deal with "mosquito youth repellent".
  • wlesieutre 1y ago
    The last arcade in my hometown hung on until 2003. Adults didn't like it because they heard someone bought weed there once. Which was probably true, but the drug fear mongering was another big piece of making sure kids didn't have anywhere they were allowed to exist without adult supervision.
    • lesser23 1y ago
      The term is helicopter parenting. Studies have shown children born after 1995 are significantly more stunted (they grow up more “slowly”) due to this. There are interesting consequences like, for example, the condition of college campuses and identity politics. There are also laws that punish parents for allowing their children unstructured, safe, adult-free time (the expansion of the definition of “neglect”). A great book called “The Coddling of the American Mind” covers this and more in great detail. These days, we have more than ever replaced the physical helicopter parent with devices.
      • scripturial 1y ago
        Where did these laws come from, why do they exist? My childhood (independent playing outside, going to the park by yourself, etc…) is not literally illegal, or did these laws always exist and no one cared?
      • jleyank 1y ago
        Keep in mind that ancient times (60's and 70's) also saw save-somebody's-ass politics. There's been a strong undercurrent of (counter)culture on campuses since then. Perhaps that was always the case, as the students would be the ones being shot on the barricades. At least that's why musicals and histories say. Perhaps the lack of an external threat or insufficient motivation vs. failure leads to a lack of focus? Certainly, helicoptering does horrible things to the younger participants. Might that see-saw from generation to generation, or have we not seen those participants becoming parents yet? I recall "good luck, we'll do all we can do to help you. F*ck up, and you're on your own...".
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• comrade1234 1y ago
  Previous generations just yolo’d it when it came to having kids. My parents were definitely not financially secure when they had us and we suffered for it our entire lives and my brother and I were a huge burden. No easy answer. If you want kids maybe not think about it so much and just yolo it. For my wife and I we didn’t really want kids in he first place and we’re much better off for it.
  • chmod775 1y ago
    > For my wife and I we didn’t really want kids in he first place and we’re much better off for it. And that's the crux of the issue: Individuals in most western societies are currently better off not having children, while society as a whole absolutely needs individuals to have a certain amount of children or run into serious issues down the line. Many societies (for example South Korea) are feeling this more and more. Way too many old people and not enough young to run the country and take care of the old. In those places not enough is being done supporting those who chose to have children for everyone's sake. Foregoing children and having saved for retirement does not mean much if in 40 years you're competing for the now extremely limited basic services against people who are in the same boat. Worse, young people may now decide that they don't feel like feeding and providing for a large population of old people through sky-high taxes and being the victim of rent-seeking. They just might throw in the towel and leave for a more functional country, using their now higher income to support their own parents, but none of the others. Who now takes care of the childless? It's going to be human misery on a scale you would expect to see in a modern society.
    • chrsw 1y ago
      > In those places not enough is being done supporting those who chose to have children for everyone's sake. Who is going to pay for other people's kids?
      • chmod775 1y ago
        Yes, that's precisely the mindset that's going to bite them down the line - is already biting some.
• delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
  > It occurs to me that Efilists don't need to do much of anything. Quite. The fertility rate is plummeting worldwide. I'd suggest these 'Efilists' visit South Korea to get their fix of low fertility. Even the nice Scandinavian countries are struggling to get their fertility rates anywhere near replacement—they are all at around 1.4 to 1.5 children per woman. At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years.
  • AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    > At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years. Not at all. Two hundred years is, what, 8 generations? (1.5/2)^8 = 0.1. We'd have a tenth the population in 200 years, so 800 million people. That may erase modern civilization, but it won't erase us.
  • protocolture 1y ago
    >At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years. Hang on let me check how much horse manure london is covered with rn and get back to you.
  • UncleMeat 1y ago
    The global population is still rising. Erase ourselves?
    • delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
      Perhaps I was being a tad hyperbolic, but yes, the human population is strongly expected to collapse after a peak some time this century. To precisely what extent is still debated, but there is consensus that it will happen. Many studies have consistently revised and brought forward their 'peak population' estimates over the past two decades. In 2000, the estimate was around twelve billion by 2150. In 2025, whether humanity will reach even ten billion by 2075 is in question. It is highly expected that many sub-Saharan countries will reach replacement rate by the mid-century. China's population has already started falling. Many Indian states are below replacement. Nigeria—a good proxy for the rest of Africa—was expected to reach ~900 million by 2100 in 2012; in 2024, that estimate was essentially halved. There is a strong correlation between education levels and emancipation (especially for girls and women), improved sanitation and health care (which means easier access to contraceptives), and fertility rate. This is what drove the fertility rate collapse in the post-war period for much of the West and East Asia. Further reductions are a result of worse work-life balance (in the case of the 'Asian tigers'), a desire to enjoy one's freedom in young adulthood (coupled with a desire to 'stick it to society'), a lack of 'a village to raise a child' in urban lifestyles, and more.
• skissane 1y ago
  If normies don't procreate, then the non-normies will – e.g. high TFR ultra-conservative religious minorities such as the Amish, ultra-Orthodox Jews, traditionalist Catholics, quiverfull Evangelicals, Salafists, Velayat-e Faqih Shi'a, etc You may eventually find that the normies dwindle and begin to die out, while the non-normies grow and spread and spread – those non-normies may eventually become the new normies
  • rayiner 1y ago
    More resources for my kids.
    • saagarjha 1y ago
      You mean more work for them to support all the retirees.
      • rayiner 1y ago
        Assumes that someone will support the retirees. Especially in multi-ethnic societies like the U.S., you’ll have a majority non-white working population with a majority white retired population. The lack of affinity between the groups will make it much easier to sharply cut retirement benefits.
        • lotsofpulp 1y ago
          The largest voter bloc will be old people, or soon to be old people. They don’t need affinity for each other, just themselves.
          • skissane 1y ago
            My mother turns 76 this year, and she’s still practising medicine - she no longer has a permanent position, but she’ll work two weeks as a locum in one place, take a few weeks off, spend another couple of weeks as a locum somewhere else, etc. In my grandparents’ generation, people often retired in their 50s and had another 30-40 years left to live. If you don’t stop working until more than half way through your 70s, you might only have another 10-15 years of life left to financially support instead of 30-40, which makes it more likely you’ll be able to do so with your own accumulated retirement savings instead of having to rely on the taxpayer
• jimbokun 1y ago
  Antinatalism is the default world view in most of the world. Birth rates are plummeting and most people are far more passionate arguing reasons to not have children than the opposite.
  • rayiner 1y ago
    “Antinatalism” is arguably distinct phenomena in individualist societies like the U.S. versus collectivist societies like Asia. The latter were heavily propagandized in the 20th century to believe that lowering birth rates was key to societal progress. It’s not a moral stance against children.
    • jimbokun 1y ago
      Maybe. It’s striking that birth rates are plummeting globally across very different cultures. It may be the reasons are completely different in different places, despite it happening everywhere all at once. Or there could be common causes that are at work all over the world.
      • lotsofpulp 1y ago
        That is because a woman’s cost of having a child is roughly the same across all cultures. Not just the biological costs and risks of pregnancy/childbirth/breastfeeding/infant rearing, but the financial cost that forces most to give up independence and have to rely on and compromise with someone else. If I was a woman, I could see having one kid, maybe two kids. Having 3 kids? Absolutely out of the question. I would never expect anyone to do what I saw my wife do (relatively uncomplicated pregnancies with secure finances) 3 or more times. And that is generally what you see, very few women having 3+ kids, and most with 0, 1, or 2. The large proportion of 0s and 1s really drags the TFR down to below replacement rate.
        • rayiner 1y ago
          > but the financial cost that forces most to give up independence and have to rely on and compromise with someone else Yeah, that’s the natural state of human existence. That you say that as if it’s something obviously detrimental is bizarre.
• Aurornis 1y ago
  Reading these comments as a parent is a reminder of much internet bubbles continue to exaggerate difficulties while ignoring anything that doesn’t fit the narrative they want to see. There’s a constant theme in the internet where people imagine the past as some golden era where life was easy and raising kids was a walk in the park. We’re supposed to believe that the modern era is uniquely terrible and raising kids is impossible. Yet looking back, history doesn’t match this narrative. I’ve worked with younger people who get ideas from Reddit that everyone in the mid 1900s was living in giant houses and living a life of luxury on the income of a mailman (literally a meme that circulates on Twitter and Reddit). They all seem confused when I explain how my grandfather on one side had to work two full-time jobs, one of which was in a mine. My other grandfather operated a farm and still had to get jobs to make ends meet. Their kids slept 2-4 to a room in small houses. They worked hard and struggled. Kids were getting jobs in their teenage years to make ends meet at the house. The list of counter-examples goes on and on, but they just won’t believe it. They’ve been so convinced by the internet that the modern world is uniquely bad and history was easy mode for raising kids. I think the weird internet communities discussed in this article are just an extreme version of this type of distortion: They gather together to reinforce some narrative, downvoting or banning the nonbelievers while rewarding those who amplify the message with upvotes, praise, and a sense of belonging. It’s scary stuff.