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> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good

by Bratmon 8mo ago

> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones. It's funny to me that of all the crazy crackpot theories on fertility Twitter, you picked the craziest and crackpotiest. I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic about the future, and what you think rich countries should be learning from them!

malux85 8mo ago
Im no expert but my gut feeling is that theres more than 1 reason people have kids. In "richer" western countries one of the strongest factors in that decision is "will my child have a good life" - that seems pretty sane to me, I wouldn't say that was the craziest and crackpotiest. But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance" Very different things
- thewebguyd 8mo ago
  > But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance" Also, in poorer countries, having kids becomes a necessity for survival. Places without safety nets, elder care, etc. You have kids to both take care of you as you age, and also as labor to help with survival. That pressure/need doesn't exist in most of the west, so that incentive is gone.
j16sdiz 8mo ago
Their life are pretty stable - consistently bad, you can say. They know what their kid have is more or less same as what they did - not improving, but not getting worse either Can you say the the same in a city where housing is getting less and less affordable,?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
phainopepla2 8mo ago
It's possible that the things that would motivate people to have children in poor undeveloped countries are very different from the things that would motivate people to have kids in wealthy developed countries. So OP's take could be right for the US but wrong for Chad. Of course, it could also be true that a certain level of affluence and freedom for women simply results in a strong downward pressure on birth rates, which is what I think is most likely. (I am not advocating for rolling back women's rights).
macintux 8mo ago
Population growth has rarely been a problem in poorer societies. Every fully developed country (afaik) has seen birth rates decline; that's the context.
tshaddox 8mo ago
Are you truly so confident that people in those countries don’t feel optimistic that their children will have better opportunities than their parents did? I’d be shocked if they didn’t feel that, and even more shocked if it didn’t end up being the case.
alephnerd 8mo ago
> I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic about the future, and what you think rich countries should be learning from them! Why not ask Israelis? Even ignoring Haredim and Arab Israelis (both whose fertility rate has fallen dramatically), secular Israelis tend to have 2 kids on average [0]. Israelis also work much longer hours than Americans (South Korea is the only developed OECD country tied with Israel in hours spent working) [1], live primarily in 2-3 bedrooms low rise brutalist apartment blocks built in the 1960s-90s, earn less than Americans, pay San Francisco level prices for everything, and have almost nonexistent government benefits. But society as a whole is very children friendly. If you have a baby crying in the background of a zoom call, it's not a faux pas to care for them. If your kids are running around in a mall no one gives you stink eye. Setting up a playdate in the office while parents are working is viewed as completely normal. Western Europeans and North Americans are much less friendly and more individualistic veering on self-centered. [0] - https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptional-fertility/ https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona... [1] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html
- daymanstep 8mo ago
  Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids? You seem to be supposing a model where most people naturally want kids, but are just discouraged from having kids because...other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall. In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
  - alephnerd 8mo ago
    > Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids Yes. They are much more tolerant about having kids and making sure to give space to people planning to have kids. > In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall. The more likely you and your peers are to have kids, the more likely you are to live in a society which will accommodate you. --- Heck, Germany gives significantly more monetary and subsidized childcare benefits than Israel (which gives almost nothing), and Israel remains significantly more expensive than much of Germany, yet secular Israelis continues to sustain a much higher fertility rate than similar Germans. It is hard to describe how kid unfriendly Western society has become.
krona 8mo ago
Or Israel? It's simply a matter of the social position of mothers, or, what defines the social status of women in a given society. In much of the world it's educational attainment and professional status, so it surprises me very little that most women in these countries don't want children, or can easily find an excuse to not to.

by Bratmon 8mo ago

malux85 8mo ago

Im no expert but my gut feeling is that theres more than 1 reason people have kids. In "richer" western countries one of the strongest factors in that decision is "will my child have a good life" - that seems pretty sane to me, I wouldn't say that was the craziest and crackpotiest. But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance" Very different things

thewebguyd 8mo ago
> But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance" Also, in poorer countries, having kids becomes a necessity for survival. Places without safety nets, elder care, etc. You have kids to both take care of you as you age, and also as labor to help with survival. That pressure/need doesn't exist in most of the west, so that incentive is gone.

j16sdiz 8mo ago

Their life are pretty stable - consistently bad, you can say. They know what their kid have is more or less same as what they did - not improving, but not getting worse either Can you say the the same in a city where housing is getting less and less affordable,?

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

phainopepla2 8mo ago

It's possible that the things that would motivate people to have children in poor undeveloped countries are very different from the things that would motivate people to have kids in wealthy developed countries. So OP's take could be right for the US but wrong for Chad. Of course, it could also be true that a certain level of affluence and freedom for women simply results in a strong downward pressure on birth rates, which is what I think is most likely. (I am not advocating for rolling back women's rights).

macintux 8mo ago

Population growth has rarely been a problem in poorer societies. Every fully developed country (afaik) has seen birth rates decline; that's the context.

tshaddox 8mo ago

Are you truly so confident that people in those countries don’t feel optimistic that their children will have better opportunities than their parents did? I’d be shocked if they didn’t feel that, and even more shocked if it didn’t end up being the case.

alephnerd 8mo ago

> I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic about the future, and what you think rich countries should be learning from them! Why not ask Israelis? Even ignoring Haredim and Arab Israelis (both whose fertility rate has fallen dramatically), secular Israelis tend to have 2 kids on average [0]. Israelis also work much longer hours than Americans (South Korea is the only developed OECD country tied with Israel in hours spent working) [1], live primarily in 2-3 bedrooms low rise brutalist apartment blocks built in the 1960s-90s, earn less than Americans, pay San Francisco level prices for everything, and have almost nonexistent government benefits. But society as a whole is very children friendly. If you have a baby crying in the background of a zoom call, it's not a faux pas to care for them. If your kids are running around in a mall no one gives you stink eye. Setting up a playdate in the office while parents are working is viewed as completely normal. Western Europeans and North Americans are much less friendly and more individualistic veering on self-centered. [0] - https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptional-fertility/ https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona... [1] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html

daymanstep 8mo ago
Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids? You seem to be supposing a model where most people naturally want kids, but are just discouraged from having kids because...other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall. In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
- alephnerd 8mo ago
  > Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids Yes. They are much more tolerant about having kids and making sure to give space to people planning to have kids. > In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall. The more likely you and your peers are to have kids, the more likely you are to live in a society which will accommodate you. --- Heck, Germany gives significantly more monetary and subsidized childcare benefits than Israel (which gives almost nothing), and Israel remains significantly more expensive than much of Germany, yet secular Israelis continues to sustain a much higher fertility rate than similar Germans. It is hard to describe how kid unfriendly Western society has become.

krona 8mo ago

Or Israel? It's simply a matter of the social position of mothers, or, what defines the social status of women in a given society. In much of the world it's educational attainment and professional status, so it surprises me very little that most women in these countries don't want children, or can easily find an excuse to not to.