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I have two teenagers and they are wonderful. But the world is NOT the same anymore. In the current moment, I would really think twice before bringing any more

I have two teenagers and they are wonderful. But the world is NOT the same anymore. In the current moment, I would really think twice before bringing any more kids into this world. I feel sorry for everyone coming of age at this time. The world got very bad very quickly. There's no jobs, no one can afford a house, healthcare, or retirement, and the climate is toast.

bpbp-mango 1y ago
What a ridiculous attitude. The world will always have problems you cannot control. People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history.
- triceratops 1y ago
  > People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history But they didn't know how screwed they were.
  - floren 1y ago
    I think literal chattel slaves knew they were pretty bad off but they still had kids. (If you implied sarcasm I apologize, it's extremely hard to tell when dealing with HN posters)
    - triceratops 1y ago
      I encourage you to do some research about this. I did and I wish I had not.
      - floren 1y ago
        edit: you know what, I'm not going into this here, I'll leave a link with some actual slave narratives about family and children. https://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/ https://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/
- louwrentius 1y ago
  Because things are supposedly “normal”, or happened “for all of history” it doesn’t make it right or moral in any way. I expect better, more thoughtful replies on HN than this.
  - bpbp-mango 1y ago
    having kids is, by default, right and moral.
    - louwrentius 1y ago
      You made that up. It’s very easy to think of circumstances where it would be very immoral because of all the suffering the children will have to endure.
      - alexey-salmin 1y ago
        Moral norms evolve to ensure survival of it's bearers. Basically under no circumstances it will be immoral for the population at large to have kids because such moral norms will quickly cease to exist. Eather because it's bearers cease to exist or more likely because they move on to more suitable moral norms. I say "more likely" because humans obviously didn't get extinct despite bringing kids into the world of suffering for about a million years.
        Tadpole9181 1y ago
        I was literally told as a kid that we were heading to overpopulation and that having kids would be immoral. The Chinese committed a genocide against girl infants with that as a justification.
        alexey-salmin 1y ago
        I'm not saying that's something that can't happen, I'm saying it can't last for long. The "immoral to have kids" crowd still exists e.g in Europe but their options are to either change their mind or to be gradually overrun by people who think otherwise.
- anonymars 1y ago
  Why is this ridiculous? If the topic is about the baby boom, surely "optimism" at the end of WWII plays a big role. (Unsurprisingly, birth rates during the Great Depression had plummeted)
  - anon291 1y ago
    The entire male populace suffered from PTSD, and substantial portions from combat induced disability. My goodness... If that's optimism imagine today.
    - gt0 1y ago
      It may be hard to believe, that is considered a major reason for the baby boom. People were happy the war was over, happy to be back with their families, The GI Bill made people optimistic about the future. There was PTSD of course, a lot of grief and life altering injuries, but back then you didn't talk about it and just drank and beat up your wife and kids instead.
- Qem 1y ago
  > People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history. Anatomically modern humans exist for ~100,000-200,000 years. Reliable contraception widely available is something that didn't exist until ~60 years ago. So we can't just use past performance to predict the future.
qq66 1y ago
Of the 110 billion people to have ever been born, maybe 2 billion have been born into more comfortable circumstances than the median child born in the United States today.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  That’s an argument for antinatalism, not an argument for how good it is today.
- malwrar 1y ago
  Were those children born to brave parents who made a choice to selflessly sacrifice to do their societal duty, or could it be that having sex is fun and only relatively recently have we managed to figure out how to do it without risking pregnancy? Given individual choice, would we have such a large population to begin with?
  - bethekidyouwant 1y ago
    People just figured out how to pull out?
    - Tadpole9181 1y ago
      Pulling out is not birth control. Good Lord.
      - pyuser583 1y ago
        The pullout method is behind the demographic free fall that began in the 19th century. It’s absolutely capable of changing demography. It’s not capable of providing consistent timing of pregnancies.
      - pretzellogician 1y ago
        Actually, it is. It's just not the most effective method. This Planned Parenthood link says in theory 96% effective, in reality 78% effective. (Caveat: their definition of "effective" is not quite clear.) https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdrawal-pull-out-method/how-effective-is-withdrawal-method-pulling-out https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdr...
Quarrelsome 1y ago
yeah but compared to the entirity of human history, its still pretty good. Like, I prefer the era I grew up in but so does my dad probably, so its hard to work out if its just a "when I were young and could run a mile without wheezing thing". i.e. We could paint similar tales of woe during the cold war about the uncertainty of the future. But that aside, I can live out my life in considerable security in the western world, earn enough to never go hungry and if I'm smart enough I can learn a skill or forge out some opportunity that gets me enough dollar to join the asset class. That's some real post 1950s opportunity for most people. Bear in mind that post-war rationing meant many people in Europe rarely ate meat. You could eat a burger for every meal today, even on a relatively low budget. I think many of us underestimate the opulence of our society. Take anyone from the pre-1950s to a supermarket and watch them lose it at how incredibly bourgeois that shit is. Show any non-elite from the 2nd or 3rd world in the late 20th century that you have your OWN ROOM or maybe even OWN BATHROOM! That's proper living. My gramma would always whine about how they were like 8 to a bed or whatever during the war. Single paned windows, cold af. My eastern european grandparents didn't even have running hot water (which was an alien experience to me) and heated their place by going to the forest and chopping wood. Even 80s or 90s kids would be exceptionally envious at the incredible access to entertainment and software of this era. Figure how spoiled a society is when it buys dreams of a violent world (fortnite, game of thrones, gta) because its own world is so secure that is doesn't have a grasp of how harrowing that shit is. My western euro grand parents who survived the war only wanted a sunny day, a patch of grass to sit on and some peace and quiet, and we have ample supply of that, even today.
anon291 1y ago
The world is amazing and AC exists. But the idiopathic depression of the modern era is certainly interesting. Doubtful it can be studied before natural selection exacts its ruthless revenge
beefnugs 1y ago
I used to be really angry at parents, thinking it was incredible cruelty to throw children into a world without teaching them just how hard capitalism is going to try and wreck them. But i guess it didn't "used" to be this bad, you used to be able to afford rent i guess. But still, we need to be teaching above all the other dumb shit thats happening in school: how capitalism hates them. How you need to eliminate middle men, having a regular wage means you are going to be an oppressed slave for life. You need to come up with your own thing, that you own and control and get to do some kind of negotiating for its value. You need to invest in things that can be used to make money in the future, little side hustles always. And maybe even deep dives on how crime really does pay, and if not figure one out yourself at least know the huge majority of people that are going to try and scam you. It is pure evil not to teach reality in high school
abletonlive 1y ago
Doomerism is an illness where you can't look out your window and see reality

bpbp-mango 1y ago

What a ridiculous attitude. The world will always have problems you cannot control. People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history.

triceratops 1y ago
> People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history But they didn't know how screwed they were.
- floren 1y ago
  I think literal chattel slaves knew they were pretty bad off but they still had kids. (If you implied sarcasm I apologize, it's extremely hard to tell when dealing with HN posters)
  - triceratops 1y ago
    I encourage you to do some research about this. I did and I wish I had not.
    - floren 1y ago
      edit: you know what, I'm not going into this here, I'll leave a link with some actual slave narratives about family and children. https://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/ https://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/
louwrentius 1y ago
Because things are supposedly “normal”, or happened “for all of history” it doesn’t make it right or moral in any way. I expect better, more thoughtful replies on HN than this.
- bpbp-mango 1y ago
  having kids is, by default, right and moral.
  - louwrentius 1y ago
    You made that up. It’s very easy to think of circumstances where it would be very immoral because of all the suffering the children will have to endure.
    - alexey-salmin 1y ago
      Moral norms evolve to ensure survival of it's bearers. Basically under no circumstances it will be immoral for the population at large to have kids because such moral norms will quickly cease to exist. Eather because it's bearers cease to exist or more likely because they move on to more suitable moral norms. I say "more likely" because humans obviously didn't get extinct despite bringing kids into the world of suffering for about a million years.
      - Tadpole9181 1y ago
        I was literally told as a kid that we were heading to overpopulation and that having kids would be immoral. The Chinese committed a genocide against girl infants with that as a justification.
        alexey-salmin 1y ago
        I'm not saying that's something that can't happen, I'm saying it can't last for long. The "immoral to have kids" crowd still exists e.g in Europe but their options are to either change their mind or to be gradually overrun by people who think otherwise.
anonymars 1y ago
Why is this ridiculous? If the topic is about the baby boom, surely "optimism" at the end of WWII plays a big role. (Unsurprisingly, birth rates during the Great Depression had plummeted)
- anon291 1y ago
  The entire male populace suffered from PTSD, and substantial portions from combat induced disability. My goodness... If that's optimism imagine today.
  - gt0 1y ago
    It may be hard to believe, that is considered a major reason for the baby boom. People were happy the war was over, happy to be back with their families, The GI Bill made people optimistic about the future. There was PTSD of course, a lot of grief and life altering injuries, but back then you didn't talk about it and just drank and beat up your wife and kids instead.
Qem 1y ago
> People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history. Anatomically modern humans exist for ~100,000-200,000 years. Reliable contraception widely available is something that didn't exist until ~60 years ago. So we can't just use past performance to predict the future.

qq66 1y ago

Of the 110 billion people to have ever been born, maybe 2 billion have been born into more comfortable circumstances than the median child born in the United States today.

Der_Einzige 1y ago
That’s an argument for antinatalism, not an argument for how good it is today.
malwrar 1y ago
Were those children born to brave parents who made a choice to selflessly sacrifice to do their societal duty, or could it be that having sex is fun and only relatively recently have we managed to figure out how to do it without risking pregnancy? Given individual choice, would we have such a large population to begin with?
- bethekidyouwant 1y ago
  People just figured out how to pull out?
  - Tadpole9181 1y ago
    Pulling out is not birth control. Good Lord.
    - pyuser583 1y ago
      The pullout method is behind the demographic free fall that began in the 19th century. It’s absolutely capable of changing demography. It’s not capable of providing consistent timing of pregnancies.
    - pretzellogician 1y ago
      Actually, it is. It's just not the most effective method. This Planned Parenthood link says in theory 96% effective, in reality 78% effective. (Caveat: their definition of "effective" is not quite clear.) https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdrawal-pull-out-method/how-effective-is-withdrawal-method-pulling-out https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdr...

Quarrelsome 1y ago

yeah but compared to the entirity of human history, its still pretty good. Like, I prefer the era I grew up in but so does my dad probably, so its hard to work out if its just a "when I were young and could run a mile without wheezing thing". i.e. We could paint similar tales of woe during the cold war about the uncertainty of the future. But that aside, I can live out my life in considerable security in the western world, earn enough to never go hungry and if I'm smart enough I can learn a skill or forge out some opportunity that gets me enough dollar to join the asset class. That's some real post 1950s opportunity for most people. Bear in mind that post-war rationing meant many people in Europe rarely ate meat. You could eat a burger for every meal today, even on a relatively low budget. I think many of us underestimate the opulence of our society. Take anyone from the pre-1950s to a supermarket and watch them lose it at how incredibly bourgeois that shit is. Show any non-elite from the 2nd or 3rd world in the late 20th century that you have your OWN ROOM or maybe even OWN BATHROOM! That's proper living. My gramma would always whine about how they were like 8 to a bed or whatever during the war. Single paned windows, cold af. My eastern european grandparents didn't even have running hot water (which was an alien experience to me) and heated their place by going to the forest and chopping wood. Even 80s or 90s kids would be exceptionally envious at the incredible access to entertainment and software of this era. Figure how spoiled a society is when it buys dreams of a violent world (fortnite, game of thrones, gta) because its own world is so secure that is doesn't have a grasp of how harrowing that shit is. My western euro grand parents who survived the war only wanted a sunny day, a patch of grass to sit on and some peace and quiet, and we have ample supply of that, even today.

anon291 1y ago

The world is amazing and AC exists. But the idiopathic depression of the modern era is certainly interesting. Doubtful it can be studied before natural selection exacts its ruthless revenge

beefnugs 1y ago

I used to be really angry at parents, thinking it was incredible cruelty to throw children into a world without teaching them just how hard capitalism is going to try and wreck them. But i guess it didn't "used" to be this bad, you used to be able to afford rent i guess. But still, we need to be teaching above all the other dumb shit thats happening in school: how capitalism hates them. How you need to eliminate middle men, having a regular wage means you are going to be an oppressed slave for life. You need to come up with your own thing, that you own and control and get to do some kind of negotiating for its value. You need to invest in things that can be used to make money in the future, little side hustles always. And maybe even deep dives on how crime really does pay, and if not figure one out yourself at least know the huge majority of people that are going to try and scam you. It is pure evil not to teach reality in high school

abletonlive 1y ago

Doomerism is an illness where you can't look out your window and see reality