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This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scan

This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. So many people I know put off having children (or curtailed the number they had) because they were reluctant to give up the activities only available in a childfree/one-and-done life. Ultimately, we are hedonistic creatures, and having kids is antithetical to the myriad hedonic pursuits available in wealthy, industrialized societies. [*] Israel is the lone exception, due to its Orthodox Jewish population. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate [1] https://pub.nordregio.org/r-2024-13-state-of-the-nordic-region-2024/chapter-2-fertility-decline-in-the-nordic-region.html https://pub.nordregio.org/r-2024-13-state-of-the-nordic-regi... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10049131/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10049131/

mekdoonggi 4mo ago
Is it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community? That's like, the complete opposite of the hedonistic young couple not using protection and accidentally getting pregnant.
- MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
  I'd call it hedonism if a couple wants to be able to go out on a date on a whim, easily take a vacation, watch adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room, maintain good sleep/health habits, keep a flexible schedule unconstrained by school pickups/staying home with a sick kid, etc. These are all real examples of why people I know delayed having kids, curtailed the number they had, or never had them altogether.
  - happytoexplain 4mo ago
    It's unclear what you're saying. Obviously it's not hedonistic to "want" those things, as you say. You might use the term if they try to have their cake and eat it too, irresponsibly. Hedonism has negative connotations, colloquially (and colloquially is how we are speaking).
    - MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
      As I wrote in another reply, I meant “hedonism” in its non-colloquial, neutral sense, i.e. the pursuit of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, which was a mistake on my part. My general point is that all the activities I listed (which only become abundantly available in rich, industrialized societies) yield more individual pleasure than having children.
      - Supernaut 4mo ago
        I've heard a lot of vox pops in recent years on the subject of why young couples where I live are not starting families, and by far the most common reason given is that the cost of living has risen to such an extent that they feel that rearing children has become unaffordable. It's not a yearning for hedonism that's dissuading them, it's the fact that they can't even afford to buy somewhere to live. I won't comment on your assertion that the freedom to watch "adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room" is a more fulfilling state of being than parenthood, except to say that I'm very grateful that I'm not that shallow.
        MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
        >[B]y far the most common reason given is that the cost of living has risen to such an extent that they feel that rearing children has become unaffordable. That's certainly a factor, though very aggressive financial incentives for parents don't seem to work very well [0, 1, 2]. Not to mention that in rich countries, educational attainment and income are negatively correlated with fertility [3]. My theory there is that people's high-powered careers provide them more self-satisfaction than having kids. >it's the fact that they can't even afford to buy somewhere to live. It's funny you mention this. Some friends said they weren't having a second kid because they couldn't afford a three bedroom house, not realizing that kids sharing bedrooms was the norm for middle class families until very recently. Having one bedroom per kid was a luxury just 30-40 years ago. >I won't comment on your assertion that the freedom to watch "adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room" is a more fulfilling state of being than parenthood It's not my assertion, it's something a couple deciding to not have another kid literally told me. They missed being able to have substantial amounts of adult time, and were actively counting down the days until their only child was old enough to amuse himself for long periods of time. Having another kid would reset that clock. [0] https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/19/viktor-orbans-pro-natalist-policies-are-not-working https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/19/viktor-orbans-pr... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/south-korea-fertility-rate-2023-fall-record-low-incentives https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/south-korea-fe... [2] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/boosting-birth-rates-government-incentives/ https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/boosting-birth-rates... [3] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-2024_918d8db3-en/full-report/fertility-trends-across-the-oecd-underlying-drivers-and-the-role-for-policy_770679b8.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-202...
- swat535 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - happytoexplain 4mo ago
    >The term "child-free" implies relieving oneself of a disease, the way one describes himself as "cancer-free" or "drug-free". Wow, this is an eyebrow-raising degree of uncharitability. There's no reason to attack straightforward words like this. Also, the parent did not make this implication. They implied it's irresponsible to have children unintentionally or flippantly.
    - swat535 4mo ago
      > Also, the parent did not make this implication You're arguing a straw man, I didn't mention that the parent made the implication. I simply refuted a portion of parent's claim that people are forgoing children to foster a care of their community or performing acts of service as they implied here: "a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community" > There's no reason to attack straightforward words like this. If you feel like my interpretation of the term is an attack, that's on you. I simply voiced what the term communicates to me. As an example, there's a reason Anti Abortionists rebranded the term to "Pro Life" because of the connotation. Terms do have an intention behind them.
      - mekdoonggi 4mo ago
        > refuted a portion of parent's claim that people are forgoing children to foster a care of their community or performing acts of service You didn't refute, you just said you didn't think that's what people are doing. In any case it doesn't matter what they do with their time, because it's theirs. > If you feel like my interpretation of the term is an attack, that's on you. > Terms do have an intention behind them. I don't know how you square that circle. You made some claims about the term child-free which are strictly your interpretation and then used it to describe their choice as ignoble. In both cases you're just ascribing a nobility and morality to having children which just isn't there.
- TFNA 4mo ago
  > Is it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing... How many people in the developed world are really doing that? My social circle is largely child-free into our thirties and forties, and the big motivation is so that we have time for our hobbies and for travel. Almost no one is dedicating their time to altruism. Especially considering that I live in a long-running welfare state, where helping people in need is generally left to the state and private charity is rare (and often has dodgy religious-sect connotations).
happytoexplain 4mo ago
This seems like the obvious explanation, though I think your use of the term "hedonism" is distracting. People are inherently selfish (how could any entity not be "self"-ish to some degree?). The bottom line is that we do things because we want to. Even selfless activities feel good. That's fine, honestly. But having children is not intrinsically non-hedonistic. It's just one of many self-fulfilling activities we choose from.
- MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
  Agreed with everything you wrote. I meant “hedonism” in its non-colloquial, neutral sense, i.e. the pursuit of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, which judging by the other replies was a mistake on my part. >But having children is not intrinsically non-hedonistic. It's just one of many self-fulfilling activities we choose from Exactly, and my point is that all the activities I listed (which only become abundantly available in rich, industrialized societies) are more self-fulfilling than having children.
alsetmusic 4mo ago
Which is not a bad thing. We have limited resources. It’s not a bad thing to slow down. Even if we’re having fewer babies, we’re far from endangered, despite some (dishonest, IMO) narratives.
boelboel 4mo ago
There's some evidence that mobile phone access is one of the biggest drivers in this. This talks about teen fertility but I'd imagine it's similar in other age categories as well. https://homepages.uc.edu/~moscoshn/Personal_webpage/papers/Smartphone_web.pdf https://homepages.uc.edu/~moscoshn/Personal_webpage/papers/S...
- FeteCommuniste 4mo ago
  Interesting. Once you have a cellphone to amuse yourself, perpetuating the species is just too much bother?
  - boelboel 4mo ago
    Phone + PC/TV probably takes an hour or two of people their day on average. If they didn't have access to it I assume they'd be meeting up with other people out of boredom and that'd lead to sex, doesn't seem too strange.
    - wtetzner 4mo ago
      I suspect on average it's much higher than an hour or two.
    - testing22321 4mo ago
      The average American watches 4 to 4.5 hours of TV per day. [1] Half of people watch more. [1] https://adwave.com/resources/average-daily-tv-viewing-time https://adwave.com/resources/average-daily-tv-viewing-time
  - laughing_man 4mo ago
    Or you spend all your time on your phone and can't understand why you're just not getting ahead in life.
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    Maybe people don't meet in person any more because they call each other = less teen pregnancy instincts.
mitthrowaway2 4mo ago
The links you posted seem to say that government fertility support policies actually do have a big effect.
porridgeraisin 4mo ago
I would argue it is due to nuclearisation of families, that has always accompanied industrialisation. See my other comment on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416228
- FeteCommuniste 4mo ago
  Fascinating hypothesis. I wonder if technological and economic progress makes "nuclearisation" inevitable, i.e. people can just move wherever the best money is at.
  - porridgeraisin 4mo ago
    I would change it from `can` to `almost forced to`. Since I am seeing nuclearisation live, here are a few observations. Industrialisation is an inherently compounding event. Thus, it gets concentrated geographically. So you get "hubs" like a tech hub, a manufacturing hub, a finance hub, etc,. So if you study CS, you cannot just take a tech job in a finance city or an export city. You got to move to a tech hub. So unless your entire family is in roughly the same line of work, it is very difficult to keep a joint family. In fact, contrary to the "more money less kids" hypothesis, the traditional "family business" families that continue to do what their ancestors did, tend to have more kids and live in joint family homes. Even if a set of parents happened to have 2.1 kids on average, the chance that in the next generation, the two siblings end up consistently living close by each other is very small. So it really only takes 30 years for TFR to fall off a cliff.
  - em-bee 4mo ago
    it's more like people are forced to move where the jobs are. mobility is demanded by the industry.
trgn 4mo ago
i put off children because it takes longer to establish a foothold. not because i loved to travel or eat out necessarily, or felt i needed to prioritize hedonistic activities over building a family. but, during that time of getting my degree, figuring out my career, get some savings, etc.. those were the things to fill up time with. i'd trade it all for having kids younger though. it's just that they would have come at a time that any kind of grip on my future was still tenuous.
- ninininino 4mo ago
  Respectfully, you don't know why you put off children. You may tell yourself a story of why you have, but for example if there was an environmental contaminant shaping population level stats on endocrines and hormones that reduced human sex drive and desire for children, you wouldn't necessarily be conscious of that.
  - card_zero 4mo ago
    That sounds more like "hormone-driven people don't know why they had children".
    - trumpdong 4mo ago
      It sounds like "nobody knows why they do or don't have children"
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - aaarrm 4mo ago
    Okay
  - dfee 4mo ago
    both points are fair, but operate at different levels. the former: willpower. the latter: constraints. and, the latter is indeed dependent on the former. but, arguing that humans have no free will is an argument that should be tried independently of rebutting the former comment.
Auracle 4mo ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with your overall point, but for some reason at least in US society you’re no longer allowed to broadly talk having kids like you used to be able to. Let me break that norm for a second. So, are other activities more fun than child rearing? Often, yeah. Definitely less stressful. Rewarding? Not in a million goddamned years. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to when your kid first walks, talks, tackles a problem they had a hard time doing before, or tells you that they love spending time with you completely unprompted. For what it’s worth, I personally think a good portion of the birth rate dropping is environmental. Maybe it’s plastics, pfas, or something else nobody is looking at. Some people still have an urge to have kids, completely separate from the urge to have sex. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that testosterone and sperm counts have been dropping among humans and dogs, and that the deliberately child free people I know all veer on the (forgive the derisive slang term, but I don’t know how else to get the point across) “soyboy” type of person - both male and female. That potential pollution aspect also explains this happening to industrial societies.
- BigTTYGothGF 4mo ago
  > you’re no longer allowed to broadly talk having kids like you used to be able to I'm not sure that this is the case, could you expand?
  - weezing 4mo ago
    Siege mentality, nothing more.
  - Auracle 4mo ago
    I've noticed it in my friend group. My friends will freely talk about parenting and how great it is until one of the childless (by choice) friends show up. It's like we don't want them to feel bad or make it seem like we're criticizing their choice. Also, I've definitely seen pro-parenthood posts be downvoted on Reddit. I don't mean anything obnoxious, just literally people talking about how they like parenting or how rewarding it is when it's relevant to the conversation. Obviously that's a super liberal group and that's where we see almost all of the decline, though.
throwagyhv6886 4mo ago
India has barely industrialized though.
- beAbU 4mo ago
  wat Why do you say so?
  - hgoel 4mo ago
    Probably pretty obvious why they're saying so, given the fresh throwaway account.
Arodex 4mo ago
One could make the point this is less about industrialization causing a change in behavior, and more chemical pollution destroying fertility. Of which we have plenty of concrete evidence.
- SubmarineClub 4mo ago
  Except evidence does not show that there are many more people trying and failing for kids as in past decades, so much as more people are delaying partnering up and having kids till later and later, along with many opting to be childless. And most fertility issues people do encounter can primarily be explained by attempting to have children decades later than is biologically optimal.
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    Chemical pollution could do that. We see it in other animals. Endocrine disruptors and stuff.
  - Arodex 4mo ago
    Sperm count is an easy-to-measure proxy, independent of the will of people to have children, that shows something is going bad, fast, everywhere.
aurareturn 4mo ago
Part of it is activities but I think the majority is that if you want a good living, you have to work in cities. But cities are very expensive to live in due to unaffordable housing. Not to mention people don’t feel secured when employment is so unstable. People don’t want to take the risk to have kids if they can’t afford a permanent home and stable employment.
- Daishiman 4mo ago
  This is likely a very significant factor as urbanization has been extremely rapid, and historically cities kept their populations afloat by a constant influx of people from rural areas.
dvh 4mo ago
I think it's not industrialization but urbanization.
- laughing_man 4mo ago
  That one ranks high on my list. If you're a farmer in the countryside children are an economic asset. They can feed the animals, plant, weed the crops, maintain fencing, etc. Once you move to the city, whatever else they are in terms of fulfillment, they're an economic liability. Oddly enough, it's likely the US and Europe defused (and then some) Erlich's population bomb with farm subsidies which pushed people off farms and in to Nike factories in the developing world.
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    Is this still true when machines do the farming?
    - laughing_man 4mo ago
      Not as much, but once you start mechanized farming you don't need many people in agriculture. There are few enough farmers in industrialized countries that they don't affect demographics much. My sense is American farmers have more children than the population at large, but I don't have numbers to back it up. My farmer maternal great grandparents had 12 and 9 children -- I don't think that happens much anymore.
    - bombcar 4mo ago
      Yes, because you can let your kids use the machines at ages that would scandalize the urbanites (check the laws for your state, you find things like "twelve year olds can operate farm machinery incidentally on a road or highway").
MSFT_Edging 4mo ago
I know the "bring them into this world" thing is overdone, but a big part of me feels it to my core. I haven't seen a firefly in a couple years. If I had a child today, describing this bug to a child would be almost mythical. How many things that we've taken for granted will a child born today never get to experience? Not shallow things like iPods, but genuine miracles of nature we're wiping out at an accelerating pace. I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying. It's my protest to allow the pyramid of consumption to collapse. I will not bring a just another customer into the world. I won't bring a child here just so they can be a pawn to try to recover from poor planning. We as humans need this population collapse. We need to learn how to organize society on long-term sustainability, not a pyramid scheme. Every time I see this discussion, it's always framed like a call to action, that we need new children to bail out the sinking boat and keep it floating for another generation or two.
- SamPatt 4mo ago
  >I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying. Who is focused on destroying the world? I don't think hardly any super villains exist. People might have a different assessment of what destroying the world means than you do.
  - MSFT_Edging 4mo ago
    Many people think a well manicured lawn sprayed with pesticides is preferable to local wildflowers and shrubs. They "have a different assessment" but they're still contributing to an extinction event. You don't need to be a super villain. You can simply be selfish. Once scaled to many many selfish people, you have a collective villain.
  - Larrikin 4mo ago
    People shutting down efforts to transition from fossil fuels because they can make more money from fossil fuels and will be dead before they experience any of the consequences are the typical example.
  - 4mo ago
myth_drannon 4mo ago
[*] All parts of the Israeli population have high birth rates, even the secular Jews. I find it misleading to single out Orthodox Jews as the main contributor. You don't do that to Evangelical Christians or Mormons, or some other groups in US. I don't think the religion is the driver here.
- canucker2016 4mo ago
  It looks like a regional phenomenon - countries near to Israel have a similar fertility rate. see (Middle East fertility rates) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=ZQ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... and (OECD fertility rates) https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html
  - canucker2016 4mo ago
    University students are predominantly female in Israel as in North America, so female education isn't a differentiator for fertility rate. I recall reading an article about the culture of Israel is friendlier towards families/young children. Not sure how that cultural aspect would show up in stats.
- jmyeet 4mo ago
  Here are the figures by group in Israel [1]: - As of 2022, the fertility rates in Israeli cities dominated by specific demographic groups were: Haredi 6.1, Bedouin 4.4, Jewish non-Haredi 2.4, Arab 2.2, Druze 1.8 So the GP's characterization is correct. Yes, non-Haredi Jewish Israelis have a higher fertility rate than in Western nations. There seems to be a variety of reasons for this including cultural/religious pressure, institutional support and selection bias (in terms of who chooses to immigrate/emigrate). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
  - MostlyStable 4mo ago
    The OPs (incorrect in this very minor detail) point was that fertility is below replacement everywhere except Israel, where the only reason it wasn't below replacement was Orthodox religious members of society. That's just wrong. Fertility in Israel, across every single group except for one in your own data, is above replacement. Orthodox are the highest, and bringing the overall number up, but if you removed them, fertility in Israel would still be comfortably above replacement. So no, their characterization was not correct, since the point was that, absent a particular group, fertility would be, like in almost every other OECD (and many non OECD) countries, below replacement.
m_fayer 4mo ago
I have a different pet explanation from the other replies here, and I honestly don't get why it's not talked about more. Basically, our economic reality and expectations have come into conflict with biology and human lifespan. If you want a secured dignified life and basic prerequisites to starting a family, every year that takes a little longer. And these days, almost everyone wants that dignified middle class life before they start a family. A degree, an advanced degree, a good enough job, sufficient housing, a little fun to boot. Not until 25, 28, 30, 33, 35. But we're supposed to have children in our early 20s. That's when we're strong and energetic enough, with good backs, and grand parents fit and willing to pitch in. When we finally feel ready in our mid 30s, we find that time has conspired against us. Our parents are far away and often ailing and demanding care and attention. We have less energy and more stress and dread the lost sleep. We have the wisdom and worldliness to know just how hard this is going to be. And once we've metabolised all those things, that's when we realize that conception is no longer a question of a great night out and a few drinks. How many kids will be born at the end of that gauntlet? We're finding out right now.
- xeonmc 4mo ago
  So support should be provided for incentivizing younger parenthood then, like guaranteed tuition assistance per children born?
  - Daishiman 4mo ago
    More like guaranteed housing because not even having a college degree is a sufficient condition to enter the middle class in this day and age.
  - Henchman21 4mo ago
    Right why would we change the behavior that got us here? Just provide some incentives and problem solved right? How about we undo the mess we’ve created through industrialization? Change the world so people WANT to have kids again?
    - nemomarx 4mo ago
Veserv 4mo ago
Except in [0] the birth rate is relatively flat between 1950-1970 and then suddenly starts a rapid reduction. Developed countries have already been industrialized for 100 years by that point. The modern work day and access to many modern fun and rewarding activitys have been available for literal decades. Mass urbanization already occurred. Many of the modern household appliances have been in use for decades. Antibiotics, vaccines, and childhood mortality had already been dramatically reduced to within the vicinity of modern norms. In developed countrys female workforce participation, education, and political activity were material with no clear fundamental shift in those metrics in the 1960s-1970s. But you know what did occur in the 1960s-1970s? The invention and popularization of the birth control pill. Here is the US birth rate [1]. Rising from 1950-1960 then a sudden and precipitous drop in the 1960s until stabilization in the 1970-now range. This coincides with the global drop in fertility rate. How about Germany [2]? Growth from 1950 to late 1960s then a sudden drop until stabilization in the mid 1970s. France [3]? Flat and high until mid-1960s then a sudden drop until stabilization in 1980. UK [4]? Growth from 1950 to mid 1960s then a sudden drop until stabilization mid 1970s. Australia [5]? Growth until 1960 then drop until stabilization in 1980. Every single developed country in the world is flat to growing and then sees a sudden and rapid decline in birth rate just a few years after mass availability of the birth control pill until stabilization around the time that the pre-birth control cohort ages past reproductive years. The birth control pill is so new that the reproductive cohort that lived prior to its invention is still alive. My hypothesis is that fertility is just a function of access to cheap, effective contraceptives. The fertility rates we see today are the natural rates when pregnancy is a choice. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/germany/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/ger... [3] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fra/france/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fra/fra... [4] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/united-kingdom/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni... [5] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/australia/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/aus...
- inglor_cz 4mo ago
inglor_cz 4mo ago
While this is generally true, the first derivative of the baby bust curve is far from uniform across the planet. Indian fertility drop has been very sharp and who knows where it will end.
VirusNewbie 4mo ago
>My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. But this is by and large not true. I've traveled, eaten at expensive restaurants, enjoyed a child free existence into my mid thirties and having kids is a blast[*] My wife was adamantly against having kids when we got together in our twenties, and she changed her mind in her late thirties; she now says that was the best thing that has happened to her. Finally, there are many studies showing that people lead happier lives when they focus on someone else, have a higher purpose beyond just hedonism or living selfishly. [*] - I have a supportive partner who collaborates with me so we both get time away and time off from the occasional drudgery or exhaustion of parenting. I still get time to work out, see friends, have time with my wife, all of that. If I couldn't afford the occasional babysitter and had a partner who was absent most of the time, it would be a lot harder!
- em-bee 4mo ago
  having kids is a blast true, but you didn't know until you had them, and society keeps telling us otherwise. we need to change the message and educate youth about becoming parents. but also create a culture where having children is welcome. in the west we complain about kids running around, making noise, being not under control. and most importantly we blame the parents. in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children, or for bringing them along when they have noone else to care for them. for example children hanging out at their parents workplace after school is normal. in the west that's ground for getting fired.
  - VirusNewbie 4mo ago
    >in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children, huh, I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing about your culture :)
    - em-bee 4mo ago
voiceofchoice 4mo ago
For the first time ever people can finally choose not to have kids. Is it really any surprise people would opt out? Go spend a day with kids and you'll see why people would rather not deal with the mess. Especially women who actually end up doing the majority of the work. Add to that the extinction level pressures like climate change and the absolute lack of any benefit whatsoever in being a parent, who is crazy enough to willingly sign up for this if you actually put any thought into it instead of just "that's the way things are though!!!" Every day I praise the man who did my vasectomy lol
- drdaeman 4mo ago
  The way I understand it, the modern sentiment is to have children meaningfully, raising them being a project parents actively invest into. Contraception brought choice, choice brought up consideration and planning. This all opened the can of "what are we doing" and "why do we do it" and "how do we do it right", that tended to be ignored in previous eras (where having or not having children was not exactly a real choice). And for little I know about raising children is that it's one hell of a job, that requires extensive knowledge, skill, and constant heavy investment, all being an unbreakable commitment for almost two decades. Messing anything up means another human suffers the consequences. In my mind, a would-be parents have to be really competent to be confident to be able to accept the responsibility, and even then screwups are a given. Skipping on any of that, even unintentionally or from inadequate skills, means a person out there will be left to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of their upbringing. The fact a lot of people skip on all of that and just do it is no excuse. And thus, personally, I never felt like having children. Not seriously, not after thinking about it in any depth. I messed up two cats already, messing up a human is unnecessary. IMHO, if a society really needs new people because can't figure out how to support old ones otherwise, it should invest into professional parenting and employ people who are genuinely enthusiastic about doing that work.
  - matchbok3 4mo ago
    As a dad of (soon) 3, I would say that social media/etc have raised the expectations of parenting. Keep in mind that the kids aren't the only ones growing up and learning - the parents are too. And hopefully learning from their parents too. "Being ready" to have a child is an impossibility so you have to embrace the unknown and be ok with mistakes. Kids are resilient, and many millions have had to do with less.
gritspants 4mo ago
I grew up blue collar and pitched in with my father's work from a very young age. As a child I was able to balance out the time and expense of raising me by contributing back to the household. I have children and they just cannot contribute to my white collar job. They can participate in some chores, but they are essentially a massive money pit. Daycare is more than my mortgage. Public school gets out at like 2:30. It's just so exhausting sometimes.
- nkg 4mo ago
  It takes a village.
- asdff 4mo ago
  They don't have afterschool care anymore in schools? We had that both formally and informally (e.g. through sports).
arjie 4mo ago
I'm the same as you. I, too, think it's just opportunity cost. Even a superficial model will show some effect as median income rises https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-02-14/Fertility_Rate https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-02-14/Fertility_Ra...
spullara 4mo ago
There are so many factors. I think the biggest one is that the developed world looked at women and said "hey, they are just as smart and capable as men and if they work at companies we have 2x the workers" which is obviously true but what it leads to is a DINK society - and it locks you in. It is just much, much harder to raise children when both parents work and they don't live near their parents and other familial support. Add that into your observation that the world is more fun and selfish and it multiplies. A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate. Then we attacked teenage pregnancy with a vengeance. In 1957 it was 96/100k teen women had babies, 62/100k in 1991 and now down to the current rate of 11/100k. The postponement of births expands the time between generations which compounds the problem. An 18 yr old could have a baby that has a baby at 18 before a 36+ year old mom has their first child. All this leads to exponential decay of humanity. In the near term we don't have to worry about extinction but we do have to worry about the pyramid schemes we have to support non-workers (like social security). This will all play out much sooner in Asia where the TFRs can be half of the US/EU. Imagine due to China's one child policy a young working person will soon have to support 2 parents and 4 grandparents somehow. There will be some kind of reckoning and some of the speculation around what it will look like is quite grim.
- just_mc 4mo ago
  > A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate This was my first intuition.
  - pjc50 4mo ago
    This is so obvious it's barely worth mentioning, table stakes for the debate? British TFR was about 3 when Marie Stopes got started, and malthusianism had not yet been conquered.
- em-bee 4mo ago
  if they work at companies we have 2x the workers i don't think that's what happened. i believe women wanting economic independence (rightly so) and thus pushing into work was a bigger factor.
dividefuel 4mo ago
I agree a lot with your hypothesis. Most people in my demographic (mid 30s American) that aren't having kids are choosing not to primarily because they don't want to really interfere with their current lifestyle. Money seems to be a part of it, but secondary to the high opportunity cost of children. There are also social effects. When half your friends have kids and half don't, you can compare the lives of each and decide which you want to live. You won't be as isolated now if you choose not to have kids... in fact the trend seems to be that having children is the isolating choice.
KellyCriterion 4mo ago
you are right IN: a) there is a lot of fun to do "outside there" but you are MASSIVLY wrong in: b) children are meaningful, they give you more than the consumption you can have - rent one month into brothel and you will see! ;-)
KellyCriterion 4mo ago
you are right IN: a) there is a lot of fun to do "outside there" but you are MASSIVLY wrong in: b) children are meaningful, they give you more than the consumption you can have - rent one month into brothel and you will see! ;-) (source: father of twins, and nearly bankrupt regardless of my tech-job, nontheless my kids me more than our usual career-shit)
lo_zamoyski 4mo ago
The main problem is the culture of consumerism. I wouldn't say we're hedonistic creatures by nature. It isn't good for us to be hedonists. I would say that hedonism is simply the nature and logic of consumerism, and consumerism—and indeed, hedonism—derails healthy human virtues, tastes, and habits like a drug and deranges one's ability to reason about reality and the good. Consumerism is intrinsically market-oriented and thus all about satisfying the desires of the market. In a hyperliberal culture that privatizes and relativizes morality and makes "freedom" from all restraint the ultimate end of human existence—full stop—that means the market is effectively god and that no desire can be wrong (in practice, this is complicated by the unfeasibility of ultimately attaining such a state of affairs). Naturally, hedonism doesn't sit still. Once it slakes its appetite for something, like a vampire, it wants to move onto something else. Its appetite only grows. Hedonism is a death spiral of indulgence of ever increasing depravity. In an amoral environment that produces people lacking proper moral and intellectual formation (apparently moral formation is "fascist"), and without at least the guardrails provided by law rightly understood, it is an easy death spiral to enter into. If life is seen as objectively without meaning, then all that remains is hedonism. Our age is full of nihilist thinly papered over with hedonistic distractions. So we're nihilists. We live in a nihilistic consumerist culture. Nihilism leads to nothingness and death.
- cindyllm 4mo ago
  [dead]
trumpdong 4mo ago
People who have children often report it being the most fulfilling thing they ever did, while other pleasures are temporary. So I don't know if I can buy this argument.
- ip26 4mo ago
  Hard to assign that a value before you are a parent though. You can only understand it in the abstract.
- 05 4mo ago
  Or: boring people who have nothing fulfilling in their lives often report having children is the most fulfilling?
wonderwonder 4mo ago
My theory is different. Decades of officials telling people that the world was overpopulated. That global warming was going to kill us all and any children born would be subjected to horrific conditions. Well mission accomplished.
broken-kebab 4mo ago
For this theory to be plausible we need to imagine that hedonistic creatures couldn't find anything more hedonistic than caring for multiple kids before industrialization. It doesn't sound realistic, mildly speaking. The modern culture simply doesn't oblige you to marry, and procreate the way it did 1-2 (depending on where you are) generations before. In the times of my mother's youth not marrying before 25-26, and not having at least one kid before 30 could really negatively affect someone's social standing. There are segments of modern West where culture still prioritizes procreation (like Orthodox Jews you mention, or old school Catholics) and they do procreate successfully despite being the same creatures as everyone else. Preferred hedonism is in culture, not nature.
mrtksn 4mo ago
> more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children Close but it’s not about fun, it’s about exploring the new possibilities. There’s simply no time for having kids when you just transition to a new way of life and you don’t know what to do. You maybe want to travel the world or build a house etc so you work more and spend more towards these. The next gen is having more kids. Bulgaria used to be a prime example of population collapse but today has the highest birth rates in Europe(not just EU). The population will still shrink but as the dust settles people have certainty, know what to expect from life and can make a choice of having kids. Traveling the world can be just a phase in the early 20s, don’t have to grind as much for the basics, the definition of success isn’t getting rich through hard work so a simple and balanced life with kids becomes a feasible and desirable option.
firdunupsa2 4mo ago
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dyauspitr 4mo ago
It’s not that complicated. As soon as women are educated and have a choice of supporting themselves the birth rate drops. If you want a higher birth rate, stop educating women and disempower them. This is something republicans in the US intimately understand.
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  Can't decipher sarcasm level
stego-tech 4mo ago
It’s a valid theory, and I certainly think it’s a contributor, but I would also argue that the “boom” years of fertility in modernity have been tied to periods of widespread benefit for most, if not all. When prospective parents and grandparents see the potential for a brighter future, there’s more societal pressure to have kids because their success will naturally boost your own. Then when the vice starts tightening, the idea is that having more kids improves your own prospects of survival and comfort in old age. Then the systems of the world had to make a choice: pay for the old at the expense of the new, or support the new by capping benefits on the old. This takes the form of social welfare programs in most developed countries, but industrialization also clamped down wealth in the hands of those who owned the means of production, and kept it from the hands of labor absent mechanisms of redistribution. Industrialization by its nature necessitates a larger investment to begin competing with established players in ways former artisans and businesses lacked: machinery, labor, logistics, technology, real estate, and materials all require expensive, up-front, and lengthy investment before potential payoff in an industrialized world that pre-industry societies didn’t have to deal (as much) with, thus locking most Capital and wealth into the hands of those who already had it to begin with. An aristocracy on steroids, choking and hoarding the lifeblood of a healthy economy into their private coffers. This plays out differently in each country depending on its economic maturity and what function it served in the global marketplace, but the outcome was the same: with entertainment being plentiful and cheap compared to the immense risks and costs of child rearing in an increasingly dim future lacking in a cohesive, collaborative narrative to be inspired by, fertility collapsed.
- smallmancontrov 4mo ago
  "But we gave 1000 lucky participants $3.50 and a used bubblegum wrapper to share between them and it didn't measurably affect their marginal propensity to have children at all! Extractive economics couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fertility crisis!"
Ifkaluva 4mo ago
I’m going to try to win the award for the most controversial theory on this thread. The real reason we are having population shrinkage is because evolution did a crappy job. It didn’t tune us to want to have kids, it tuned us to want to have sex, and it linked to sex to reproduction. As we got smarter, and eventually develop contraception, we are essentially reward hacking evolution’s crude hack. What’s going to happen over the next few decades is that a few variants here and there are going to spread throughout the population that actually lead to more kids, not just through desire for sex. It will be a population crash, followed by a recovery.
- accidentallfact 4mo ago
  >I’m going to try to win the award for the most controversial theory on this thread. Extremely easy to beat that. You can see that global population used to stay at around half a billion until around 1700. The growth is a recent thing. So let me propose a more controversial theory - lead made people have a lot of children. You can't beat this.
  - chrisco255 4mo ago
    Lead? Lead was used for millenia. The Romans made copious use of lead.
    - defrost 4mo ago
      And the Romans had many children? Humans had many offspring for millennia, humanity has had fewer offspring since lead has been banned. I'm not the one proposing the theory, but that's a correlation.
- skissane 4mo ago
  Last month, the US Census Bureau released their 2025 population estimates. In the ~5 years from April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025, it estimates Kiryas Joel's population grew from 32,956 to 47,147 – a 43.1% increase. [0] That's not spectacular in the figures themselves–you'll see bigger bumps when new suburbs are established–but it is spectacular in being almost all due to natural increase instead of migration. Evolution is still working, if we understand it as having both biological and cultural components. Give it a few centuries, and secular people will be outnumbered by ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the Amish, and radtrad Catholics, and Mormon polygamists, and so on. That's the thesis of Eric Kaufmann's 2010 book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? – and I believe, on the whole, he's right. [0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kiryasjoelvillagenewyork/PST04522 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kiryasjoelvilla...
mergetree 4mo ago
[dead]
BobbyTables2 4mo ago
Unless one gets a large van, daily life becomes less convenient beyond 2 kids. Midsize sedan/SUV aren’t great at more than 2 parents + 2 kids (especially with car seats!) Vacations are also more expensive since a lot of hotel rooms don’t allow more than 2 adults + 2 kids. More is also harder on the parents !
- funofthegame 4mo ago
  Hotel + plane flights is too expensive for large families. I try to drive and stay in Airbnbs, and then doesn't matter how many kids.
Drupon 4mo ago
>due to its Orthodox Jewish population and its use of United States tax dollars to fund social services that make it possible to raise their broods that American citizens simply don't get.
lenkite 4mo ago
And this is terrific news for the future. A nation of our size just cannot afford to have more than ~400 million people without severe issues causing extremely poor quality of life. We are already bursting at the seams at 1.5 billion and will be suffering deeply when it reaches 1.8 billion. (Also, the current adult population is higher than the official figures) We have severe water scarcity, severe deforestation, severe pollution - the list of problems is endless. Some of these problems are being covered up by our current government by stupid changes in measure - agriculture is now treated as "forestation".
epolanski 4mo ago
> and offering extensive support and incentives to parents Most studies show that support and incentives is borderline money thrown away if the incentive is to have more kids. You are giving money to people that would've had kids anyway.
epolanski 4mo ago
The massive change is the transformation of women's role in society and education. Essentially for pregnancies at 25 years old or later there are no number changes. Women of that age have as many kids as they ever had. But, pregnancies for very young women and teenagers has virtually disappeared. As women start having children much later, they simply have much less. As a millennial in southern Europe, the average age of our mothers in early 20s. 35 years later, the average age of first time mothers in my group is 33+. The article you're commenting points it out as well: > But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Schooling means that girls gain more autonomy and a greater say in life’s decisions.
Ampersander 4mo ago
Even with extensive support and subsidies from the state, having children is an economic loss for the individual in today's society. Back in agricultural society, having children was an economic gain, because you could put them to do work for you. Now if the state wants children it would need to pay both for the missed fun times and also the missed career opportunities that come from having children.
ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
From the abstract of your link 2: > As indicated by the results: (1) Family welfare policies notably boost fertility, and the boosting effect is long-lasting There appears to be a concerned effort to claim that incentivising raising children doesn't work. Clearly the people with (control of) the money don't feel like spending it on this.
zrn900 4mo ago
> My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. Or, as societies industrialize, life becomes more complex, time-consuming, and tiring than the simpler ways of life people were used to and able to manage...
markus_zhang 4mo ago
I’d argue that most of those support and incentives are barely enough in modern societies. In modern societies families are atomic. Parents don’t get support from grandparents very often and sometimes they don’t get any support. There is no community support either, or very very little unless you happen to belong in some ethnics. On the other hand, people are more aware these days and regulations are tougher, so you can’t do a lot of things back in the day, like my parents used to leave 4 years old me to my neighbours for work. So I’d argue that our society is actually more and more difficult for parents to give birth to babies, especially middle class parents because they don’t even enjoy much of financial support anyway — those goes to poorer families. And this becomes clearer if you look at wealth distribution. Nowadays, in my city, which is considered as the most affordable metropolitan in Canada, it is very difficult for working people to buy properties with median salaries — and rent has gone up too so you can’t say “just rent it”. All in all, I don’t know about Northern EU but it is harder and harder for working parents in Canada to have babies.
oliwarner 4mo ago
It's not just about fun. We are beaten into believing we need an education, a career, a home, stability before we have children. We're having kids in our 40s when our parents started in their 20s. We're naturally less able to have as many because menopause kicks in. There are no easy answers here. Younger pregnancy limits education and careers.
idontwantthis 4mo ago
I think this is close but misses the only thing that really matters: birth control makes it a choice. We are just 3 generations into being able to decide whether or not sex means kids. And making that positive choice takes a lot of energy.
analog31 4mo ago
"Hedonism" seems like an interesting term for a straightforward personal choice. I don't have a specific reference, but both affluence and a decline of childbirth seem to be related to improving the education and economic agency of women. Society can cope.
- dpark 4mo ago
  It seems like the right word. Hedonism doesn’t imply debauchery. It’s just prioritizing pleasure. It’s a hedonistic choice to forgo children in order to enjoy the pleasures of an unencumbered lifestyle. It’s also a personal choice (though I would not say it’s straightforward for most).
  - littlexsparkee 4mo ago
    It's always invoked as if that makes life shallow - if avoiding pain (raising kids) is hedonism, then yeah I'm a hedonist. I'm not going to self-flagellate to appease society's desire for workers. Bad assumptions about demographics aren't a good reason for people to procreate, just to prolong a scheme that can't hold.
- OhioMan2943 4mo ago
  Does "coping" in this situation mean having 75% of any western countries young population foreign born and erasing thousands of years of culture and history?
  - analog31 4mo ago
    Now in addition to preserving the economic order, people are responsible for preserving culture and history? That's too much to ask for. Cultures evolve. Our children might not choose to follow our culture. Even within any given western country, people disagree on what the indigenous culture consists of. My country has been described as being in the midst of a culture war.

mekdoonggi 4mo ago

Is it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community? That's like, the complete opposite of the hedonistic young couple not using protection and accidentally getting pregnant.

MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
I'd call it hedonism if a couple wants to be able to go out on a date on a whim, easily take a vacation, watch adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room, maintain good sleep/health habits, keep a flexible schedule unconstrained by school pickups/staying home with a sick kid, etc. These are all real examples of why people I know delayed having kids, curtailed the number they had, or never had them altogether.
- happytoexplain 4mo ago
  It's unclear what you're saying. Obviously it's not hedonistic to "want" those things, as you say. You might use the term if they try to have their cake and eat it too, irresponsibly. Hedonism has negative connotations, colloquially (and colloquially is how we are speaking).
  - MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
    As I wrote in another reply, I meant “hedonism” in its non-colloquial, neutral sense, i.e. the pursuit of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, which was a mistake on my part. My general point is that all the activities I listed (which only become abundantly available in rich, industrialized societies) yield more individual pleasure than having children.
    - Supernaut 4mo ago
      I've heard a lot of vox pops in recent years on the subject of why young couples where I live are not starting families, and by far the most common reason given is that the cost of living has risen to such an extent that they feel that rearing children has become unaffordable. It's not a yearning for hedonism that's dissuading them, it's the fact that they can't even afford to buy somewhere to live. I won't comment on your assertion that the freedom to watch "adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room" is a more fulfilling state of being than parenthood, except to say that I'm very grateful that I'm not that shallow.
      - MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
        >[B]y far the most common reason given is that the cost of living has risen to such an extent that they feel that rearing children has become unaffordable. That's certainly a factor, though very aggressive financial incentives for parents don't seem to work very well [0, 1, 2]. Not to mention that in rich countries, educational attainment and income are negatively correlated with fertility [3]. My theory there is that people's high-powered careers provide them more self-satisfaction than having kids. >it's the fact that they can't even afford to buy somewhere to live. It's funny you mention this. Some friends said they weren't having a second kid because they couldn't afford a three bedroom house, not realizing that kids sharing bedrooms was the norm for middle class families until very recently. Having one bedroom per kid was a luxury just 30-40 years ago. >I won't comment on your assertion that the freedom to watch "adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room" is a more fulfilling state of being than parenthood It's not my assertion, it's something a couple deciding to not have another kid literally told me. They missed being able to have substantial amounts of adult time, and were actively counting down the days until their only child was old enough to amuse himself for long periods of time. Having another kid would reset that clock. [0] https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/19/viktor-orbans-pro-natalist-policies-are-not-working https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/19/viktor-orbans-pr... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/south-korea-fertility-rate-2023-fall-record-low-incentives https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/south-korea-fe... [2] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/boosting-birth-rates-government-incentives/ https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/boosting-birth-rates... [3] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-2024_918d8db3-en/full-report/fertility-trends-across-the-oecd-underlying-drivers-and-the-role-for-policy_770679b8.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/society-at-a-glance-202...
swat535 4mo ago
[flagged]
- happytoexplain 4mo ago
  >The term "child-free" implies relieving oneself of a disease, the way one describes himself as "cancer-free" or "drug-free". Wow, this is an eyebrow-raising degree of uncharitability. There's no reason to attack straightforward words like this. Also, the parent did not make this implication. They implied it's irresponsible to have children unintentionally or flippantly.
  - swat535 4mo ago
    > Also, the parent did not make this implication You're arguing a straw man, I didn't mention that the parent made the implication. I simply refuted a portion of parent's claim that people are forgoing children to foster a care of their community or performing acts of service as they implied here: "a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community" > There's no reason to attack straightforward words like this. If you feel like my interpretation of the term is an attack, that's on you. I simply voiced what the term communicates to me. As an example, there's a reason Anti Abortionists rebranded the term to "Pro Life" because of the connotation. Terms do have an intention behind them.
    - mekdoonggi 4mo ago
      > refuted a portion of parent's claim that people are forgoing children to foster a care of their community or performing acts of service You didn't refute, you just said you didn't think that's what people are doing. In any case it doesn't matter what they do with their time, because it's theirs. > If you feel like my interpretation of the term is an attack, that's on you. > Terms do have an intention behind them. I don't know how you square that circle. You made some claims about the term child-free which are strictly your interpretation and then used it to describe their choice as ignoble. In both cases you're just ascribing a nobility and morality to having children which just isn't there.
TFNA 4mo ago
> Is it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing... How many people in the developed world are really doing that? My social circle is largely child-free into our thirties and forties, and the big motivation is so that we have time for our hobbies and for travel. Almost no one is dedicating their time to altruism. Especially considering that I live in a long-running welfare state, where helping people in need is generally left to the state and private charity is rare (and often has dodgy religious-sect connotations).

happytoexplain 4mo ago

This seems like the obvious explanation, though I think your use of the term "hedonism" is distracting. People are inherently selfish (how could any entity not be "self"-ish to some degree?). The bottom line is that we do things because we want to. Even selfless activities feel good. That's fine, honestly. But having children is not intrinsically non-hedonistic. It's just one of many self-fulfilling activities we choose from.

MontyCarloHall 4mo ago
Agreed with everything you wrote. I meant “hedonism” in its non-colloquial, neutral sense, i.e. the pursuit of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, which judging by the other replies was a mistake on my part. >But having children is not intrinsically non-hedonistic. It's just one of many self-fulfilling activities we choose from Exactly, and my point is that all the activities I listed (which only become abundantly available in rich, industrialized societies) are more self-fulfilling than having children.

alsetmusic 4mo ago

Which is not a bad thing. We have limited resources. It’s not a bad thing to slow down. Even if we’re having fewer babies, we’re far from endangered, despite some (dishonest, IMO) narratives.

boelboel 4mo ago

There's some evidence that mobile phone access is one of the biggest drivers in this. This talks about teen fertility but I'd imagine it's similar in other age categories as well. https://homepages.uc.edu/~moscoshn/Personal_webpage/papers/Smartphone_web.pdf https://homepages.uc.edu/~moscoshn/Personal_webpage/papers/S...

FeteCommuniste 4mo ago
Interesting. Once you have a cellphone to amuse yourself, perpetuating the species is just too much bother?
- boelboel 4mo ago
  Phone + PC/TV probably takes an hour or two of people their day on average. If they didn't have access to it I assume they'd be meeting up with other people out of boredom and that'd lead to sex, doesn't seem too strange.
  - wtetzner 4mo ago
    I suspect on average it's much higher than an hour or two.
  - testing22321 4mo ago
    The average American watches 4 to 4.5 hours of TV per day. [1] Half of people watch more. [1] https://adwave.com/resources/average-daily-tv-viewing-time https://adwave.com/resources/average-daily-tv-viewing-time
- laughing_man 4mo ago
  Or you spend all your time on your phone and can't understand why you're just not getting ahead in life.
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  Maybe people don't meet in person any more because they call each other = less teen pregnancy instincts.

mitthrowaway2 4mo ago

The links you posted seem to say that government fertility support policies actually do have a big effect.

porridgeraisin 4mo ago

I would argue it is due to nuclearisation of families, that has always accompanied industrialisation. See my other comment on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48416228

FeteCommuniste 4mo ago
Fascinating hypothesis. I wonder if technological and economic progress makes "nuclearisation" inevitable, i.e. people can just move wherever the best money is at.
- porridgeraisin 4mo ago
  I would change it from `can` to `almost forced to`. Since I am seeing nuclearisation live, here are a few observations. Industrialisation is an inherently compounding event. Thus, it gets concentrated geographically. So you get "hubs" like a tech hub, a manufacturing hub, a finance hub, etc,. So if you study CS, you cannot just take a tech job in a finance city or an export city. You got to move to a tech hub. So unless your entire family is in roughly the same line of work, it is very difficult to keep a joint family. In fact, contrary to the "more money less kids" hypothesis, the traditional "family business" families that continue to do what their ancestors did, tend to have more kids and live in joint family homes. Even if a set of parents happened to have 2.1 kids on average, the chance that in the next generation, the two siblings end up consistently living close by each other is very small. So it really only takes 30 years for TFR to fall off a cliff.
- em-bee 4mo ago
  it's more like people are forced to move where the jobs are. mobility is demanded by the industry.

trgn 4mo ago

i put off children because it takes longer to establish a foothold. not because i loved to travel or eat out necessarily, or felt i needed to prioritize hedonistic activities over building a family. but, during that time of getting my degree, figuring out my career, get some savings, etc.. those were the things to fill up time with. i'd trade it all for having kids younger though. it's just that they would have come at a time that any kind of grip on my future was still tenuous.

ninininino 4mo ago
Respectfully, you don't know why you put off children. You may tell yourself a story of why you have, but for example if there was an environmental contaminant shaping population level stats on endocrines and hormones that reduced human sex drive and desire for children, you wouldn't necessarily be conscious of that.
- card_zero 4mo ago
  That sounds more like "hormone-driven people don't know why they had children".
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    It sounds like "nobody knows why they do or don't have children"
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- aaarrm 4mo ago
  Okay
- dfee 4mo ago
  both points are fair, but operate at different levels. the former: willpower. the latter: constraints. and, the latter is indeed dependent on the former. but, arguing that humans have no free will is an argument that should be tried independently of rebutting the former comment.

Auracle 4mo ago

I don’t necessarily disagree with your overall point, but for some reason at least in US society you’re no longer allowed to broadly talk having kids like you used to be able to. Let me break that norm for a second. So, are other activities more fun than child rearing? Often, yeah. Definitely less stressful. Rewarding? Not in a million goddamned years. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to when your kid first walks, talks, tackles a problem they had a hard time doing before, or tells you that they love spending time with you completely unprompted. For what it’s worth, I personally think a good portion of the birth rate dropping is environmental. Maybe it’s plastics, pfas, or something else nobody is looking at. Some people still have an urge to have kids, completely separate from the urge to have sex. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that testosterone and sperm counts have been dropping among humans and dogs, and that the deliberately child free people I know all veer on the (forgive the derisive slang term, but I don’t know how else to get the point across) “soyboy” type of person - both male and female. That potential pollution aspect also explains this happening to industrial societies.

BigTTYGothGF 4mo ago
> you’re no longer allowed to broadly talk having kids like you used to be able to I'm not sure that this is the case, could you expand?
- weezing 4mo ago
  Siege mentality, nothing more.
- Auracle 4mo ago
  I've noticed it in my friend group. My friends will freely talk about parenting and how great it is until one of the childless (by choice) friends show up. It's like we don't want them to feel bad or make it seem like we're criticizing their choice. Also, I've definitely seen pro-parenthood posts be downvoted on Reddit. I don't mean anything obnoxious, just literally people talking about how they like parenting or how rewarding it is when it's relevant to the conversation. Obviously that's a super liberal group and that's where we see almost all of the decline, though.

throwagyhv6886 4mo ago

India has barely industrialized though.

beAbU 4mo ago
wat Why do you say so?
- hgoel 4mo ago
  Probably pretty obvious why they're saying so, given the fresh throwaway account.

Arodex 4mo ago

One could make the point this is less about industrialization causing a change in behavior, and more chemical pollution destroying fertility. Of which we have plenty of concrete evidence.

SubmarineClub 4mo ago
Except evidence does not show that there are many more people trying and failing for kids as in past decades, so much as more people are delaying partnering up and having kids till later and later, along with many opting to be childless. And most fertility issues people do encounter can primarily be explained by attempting to have children decades later than is biologically optimal.
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  Chemical pollution could do that. We see it in other animals. Endocrine disruptors and stuff.
- Arodex 4mo ago
  Sperm count is an easy-to-measure proxy, independent of the will of people to have children, that shows something is going bad, fast, everywhere.

aurareturn 4mo ago

Part of it is activities but I think the majority is that if you want a good living, you have to work in cities. But cities are very expensive to live in due to unaffordable housing. Not to mention people don’t feel secured when employment is so unstable. People don’t want to take the risk to have kids if they can’t afford a permanent home and stable employment.

Daishiman 4mo ago
This is likely a very significant factor as urbanization has been extremely rapid, and historically cities kept their populations afloat by a constant influx of people from rural areas.

dvh 4mo ago

I think it's not industrialization but urbanization.

laughing_man 4mo ago
That one ranks high on my list. If you're a farmer in the countryside children are an economic asset. They can feed the animals, plant, weed the crops, maintain fencing, etc. Once you move to the city, whatever else they are in terms of fulfillment, they're an economic liability. Oddly enough, it's likely the US and Europe defused (and then some) Erlich's population bomb with farm subsidies which pushed people off farms and in to Nike factories in the developing world.
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  Is this still true when machines do the farming?
  - laughing_man 4mo ago
    Not as much, but once you start mechanized farming you don't need many people in agriculture. There are few enough farmers in industrialized countries that they don't affect demographics much. My sense is American farmers have more children than the population at large, but I don't have numbers to back it up. My farmer maternal great grandparents had 12 and 9 children -- I don't think that happens much anymore.
  - bombcar 4mo ago
    Yes, because you can let your kids use the machines at ages that would scandalize the urbanites (check the laws for your state, you find things like "twelve year olds can operate farm machinery incidentally on a road or highway").

MSFT_Edging 4mo ago

I know the "bring them into this world" thing is overdone, but a big part of me feels it to my core. I haven't seen a firefly in a couple years. If I had a child today, describing this bug to a child would be almost mythical. How many things that we've taken for granted will a child born today never get to experience? Not shallow things like iPods, but genuine miracles of nature we're wiping out at an accelerating pace. I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying. It's my protest to allow the pyramid of consumption to collapse. I will not bring a just another customer into the world. I won't bring a child here just so they can be a pawn to try to recover from poor planning. We as humans need this population collapse. We need to learn how to organize society on long-term sustainability, not a pyramid scheme. Every time I see this discussion, it's always framed like a call to action, that we need new children to bail out the sinking boat and keep it floating for another generation or two.

SamPatt 4mo ago
>I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying. Who is focused on destroying the world? I don't think hardly any super villains exist. People might have a different assessment of what destroying the world means than you do.
- MSFT_Edging 4mo ago
  Many people think a well manicured lawn sprayed with pesticides is preferable to local wildflowers and shrubs. They "have a different assessment" but they're still contributing to an extinction event. You don't need to be a super villain. You can simply be selfish. Once scaled to many many selfish people, you have a collective villain.
- Larrikin 4mo ago
  People shutting down efforts to transition from fossil fuels because they can make more money from fossil fuels and will be dead before they experience any of the consequences are the typical example.
- 4mo ago

myth_drannon 4mo ago

[*] All parts of the Israeli population have high birth rates, even the secular Jews. I find it misleading to single out Orthodox Jews as the main contributor. You don't do that to Evangelical Christians or Mormons, or some other groups in US. I don't think the religion is the driver here.

canucker2016 4mo ago
It looks like a regional phenomenon - countries near to Israel have a similar fertility rate. see (Middle East fertility rates) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=ZQ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... and (OECD fertility rates) https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html
- canucker2016 4mo ago
  University students are predominantly female in Israel as in North America, so female education isn't a differentiator for fertility rate. I recall reading an article about the culture of Israel is friendlier towards families/young children. Not sure how that cultural aspect would show up in stats.
jmyeet 4mo ago
Here are the figures by group in Israel [1]: - As of 2022, the fertility rates in Israeli cities dominated by specific demographic groups were: Haredi 6.1, Bedouin 4.4, Jewish non-Haredi 2.4, Arab 2.2, Druze 1.8 So the GP's characterization is correct. Yes, non-Haredi Jewish Israelis have a higher fertility rate than in Western nations. There seems to be a variety of reasons for this including cultural/religious pressure, institutional support and selection bias (in terms of who chooses to immigrate/emigrate). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
- MostlyStable 4mo ago
  The OPs (incorrect in this very minor detail) point was that fertility is below replacement everywhere except Israel, where the only reason it wasn't below replacement was Orthodox religious members of society. That's just wrong. Fertility in Israel, across every single group except for one in your own data, is above replacement. Orthodox are the highest, and bringing the overall number up, but if you removed them, fertility in Israel would still be comfortably above replacement. So no, their characterization was not correct, since the point was that, absent a particular group, fertility would be, like in almost every other OECD (and many non OECD) countries, below replacement.

m_fayer 4mo ago

I have a different pet explanation from the other replies here, and I honestly don't get why it's not talked about more. Basically, our economic reality and expectations have come into conflict with biology and human lifespan. If you want a secured dignified life and basic prerequisites to starting a family, every year that takes a little longer. And these days, almost everyone wants that dignified middle class life before they start a family. A degree, an advanced degree, a good enough job, sufficient housing, a little fun to boot. Not until 25, 28, 30, 33, 35. But we're supposed to have children in our early 20s. That's when we're strong and energetic enough, with good backs, and grand parents fit and willing to pitch in. When we finally feel ready in our mid 30s, we find that time has conspired against us. Our parents are far away and often ailing and demanding care and attention. We have less energy and more stress and dread the lost sleep. We have the wisdom and worldliness to know just how hard this is going to be. And once we've metabolised all those things, that's when we realize that conception is no longer a question of a great night out and a few drinks. How many kids will be born at the end of that gauntlet? We're finding out right now.

xeonmc 4mo ago
So support should be provided for incentivizing younger parenthood then, like guaranteed tuition assistance per children born?
- Daishiman 4mo ago
  More like guaranteed housing because not even having a college degree is a sufficient condition to enter the middle class in this day and age.
- Henchman21 4mo ago
  Right why would we change the behavior that got us here? Just provide some incentives and problem solved right? How about we undo the mess we’ve created through industrialization? Change the world so people WANT to have kids again?
  - nemomarx 4mo ago

Veserv 4mo ago

Except in [0] the birth rate is relatively flat between 1950-1970 and then suddenly starts a rapid reduction. Developed countries have already been industrialized for 100 years by that point. The modern work day and access to many modern fun and rewarding activitys have been available for literal decades. Mass urbanization already occurred. Many of the modern household appliances have been in use for decades. Antibiotics, vaccines, and childhood mortality had already been dramatically reduced to within the vicinity of modern norms. In developed countrys female workforce participation, education, and political activity were material with no clear fundamental shift in those metrics in the 1960s-1970s. But you know what did occur in the 1960s-1970s? The invention and popularization of the birth control pill. Here is the US birth rate [1]. Rising from 1950-1960 then a sudden and precipitous drop in the 1960s until stabilization in the 1970-now range. This coincides with the global drop in fertility rate. How about Germany [2]? Growth from 1950 to late 1960s then a sudden drop until stabilization in the mid 1970s. France [3]? Flat and high until mid-1960s then a sudden drop until stabilization in 1980. UK [4]? Growth from 1950 to mid 1960s then a sudden drop until stabilization mid 1970s. Australia [5]? Growth until 1960 then drop until stabilization in 1980. Every single developed country in the world is flat to growing and then sees a sudden and rapid decline in birth rate just a few years after mass availability of the birth control pill until stabilization around the time that the pre-birth control cohort ages past reproductive years. The birth control pill is so new that the reproductive cohort that lived prior to its invention is still alive. My hypothesis is that fertility is just a function of access to cheap, effective contraceptives. The fertility rates we see today are the natural rates when pregnancy is a choice. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/germany/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/ger... [3] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fra/france/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fra/fra... [4] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/united-kingdom/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni... [5] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/australia/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/aus...

inglor_cz 4mo ago

inglor_cz 4mo ago

While this is generally true, the first derivative of the baby bust curve is far from uniform across the planet. Indian fertility drop has been very sharp and who knows where it will end.

VirusNewbie 4mo ago

>My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. But this is by and large not true. I've traveled, eaten at expensive restaurants, enjoyed a child free existence into my mid thirties and having kids is a blast[*] My wife was adamantly against having kids when we got together in our twenties, and she changed her mind in her late thirties; she now says that was the best thing that has happened to her. Finally, there are many studies showing that people lead happier lives when they focus on someone else, have a higher purpose beyond just hedonism or living selfishly. [*] - I have a supportive partner who collaborates with me so we both get time away and time off from the occasional drudgery or exhaustion of parenting. I still get time to work out, see friends, have time with my wife, all of that. If I couldn't afford the occasional babysitter and had a partner who was absent most of the time, it would be a lot harder!

em-bee 4mo ago
having kids is a blast true, but you didn't know until you had them, and society keeps telling us otherwise. we need to change the message and educate youth about becoming parents. but also create a culture where having children is welcome. in the west we complain about kids running around, making noise, being not under control. and most importantly we blame the parents. in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children, or for bringing them along when they have noone else to care for them. for example children hanging out at their parents workplace after school is normal. in the west that's ground for getting fired.
- VirusNewbie 4mo ago
  >in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children, huh, I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing about your culture :)
  - em-bee 4mo ago

voiceofchoice 4mo ago

For the first time ever people can finally choose not to have kids. Is it really any surprise people would opt out? Go spend a day with kids and you'll see why people would rather not deal with the mess. Especially women who actually end up doing the majority of the work. Add to that the extinction level pressures like climate change and the absolute lack of any benefit whatsoever in being a parent, who is crazy enough to willingly sign up for this if you actually put any thought into it instead of just "that's the way things are though!!!" Every day I praise the man who did my vasectomy lol

drdaeman 4mo ago
The way I understand it, the modern sentiment is to have children meaningfully, raising them being a project parents actively invest into. Contraception brought choice, choice brought up consideration and planning. This all opened the can of "what are we doing" and "why do we do it" and "how do we do it right", that tended to be ignored in previous eras (where having or not having children was not exactly a real choice). And for little I know about raising children is that it's one hell of a job, that requires extensive knowledge, skill, and constant heavy investment, all being an unbreakable commitment for almost two decades. Messing anything up means another human suffers the consequences. In my mind, a would-be parents have to be really competent to be confident to be able to accept the responsibility, and even then screwups are a given. Skipping on any of that, even unintentionally or from inadequate skills, means a person out there will be left to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of their upbringing. The fact a lot of people skip on all of that and just do it is no excuse. And thus, personally, I never felt like having children. Not seriously, not after thinking about it in any depth. I messed up two cats already, messing up a human is unnecessary. IMHO, if a society really needs new people because can't figure out how to support old ones otherwise, it should invest into professional parenting and employ people who are genuinely enthusiastic about doing that work.
- matchbok3 4mo ago
  As a dad of (soon) 3, I would say that social media/etc have raised the expectations of parenting. Keep in mind that the kids aren't the only ones growing up and learning - the parents are too. And hopefully learning from their parents too. "Being ready" to have a child is an impossibility so you have to embrace the unknown and be ok with mistakes. Kids are resilient, and many millions have had to do with less.

gritspants 4mo ago

I grew up blue collar and pitched in with my father's work from a very young age. As a child I was able to balance out the time and expense of raising me by contributing back to the household. I have children and they just cannot contribute to my white collar job. They can participate in some chores, but they are essentially a massive money pit. Daycare is more than my mortgage. Public school gets out at like 2:30. It's just so exhausting sometimes.

nkg 4mo ago
It takes a village.
asdff 4mo ago
They don't have afterschool care anymore in schools? We had that both formally and informally (e.g. through sports).

arjie 4mo ago

I'm the same as you. I, too, think it's just opportunity cost. Even a superficial model will show some effect as median income rises https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-02-14/Fertility_Rate https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-02-14/Fertility_Ra...

spullara 4mo ago

There are so many factors. I think the biggest one is that the developed world looked at women and said "hey, they are just as smart and capable as men and if they work at companies we have 2x the workers" which is obviously true but what it leads to is a DINK society - and it locks you in. It is just much, much harder to raise children when both parents work and they don't live near their parents and other familial support. Add that into your observation that the world is more fun and selfish and it multiplies. A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate. Then we attacked teenage pregnancy with a vengeance. In 1957 it was 96/100k teen women had babies, 62/100k in 1991 and now down to the current rate of 11/100k. The postponement of births expands the time between generations which compounds the problem. An 18 yr old could have a baby that has a baby at 18 before a 36+ year old mom has their first child. All this leads to exponential decay of humanity. In the near term we don't have to worry about extinction but we do have to worry about the pyramid schemes we have to support non-workers (like social security). This will all play out much sooner in Asia where the TFRs can be half of the US/EU. Imagine due to China's one child policy a young working person will soon have to support 2 parents and 4 grandparents somehow. There will be some kind of reckoning and some of the speculation around what it will look like is quite grim.

just_mc 4mo ago
> A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate This was my first intuition.
- pjc50 4mo ago
  This is so obvious it's barely worth mentioning, table stakes for the debate? British TFR was about 3 when Marie Stopes got started, and malthusianism had not yet been conquered.
em-bee 4mo ago
if they work at companies we have 2x the workers i don't think that's what happened. i believe women wanting economic independence (rightly so) and thus pushing into work was a bigger factor.

dividefuel 4mo ago

I agree a lot with your hypothesis. Most people in my demographic (mid 30s American) that aren't having kids are choosing not to primarily because they don't want to really interfere with their current lifestyle. Money seems to be a part of it, but secondary to the high opportunity cost of children. There are also social effects. When half your friends have kids and half don't, you can compare the lives of each and decide which you want to live. You won't be as isolated now if you choose not to have kids... in fact the trend seems to be that having children is the isolating choice.

KellyCriterion 4mo ago

you are right IN: a) there is a lot of fun to do "outside there" but you are MASSIVLY wrong in: b) children are meaningful, they give you more than the consumption you can have - rent one month into brothel and you will see! ;-) (source: father of twins, and nearly bankrupt regardless of my tech-job, nontheless my kids me more than our usual career-shit)

lo_zamoyski 4mo ago

The main problem is the culture of consumerism. I wouldn't say we're hedonistic creatures by nature. It isn't good for us to be hedonists. I would say that hedonism is simply the nature and logic of consumerism, and consumerism—and indeed, hedonism—derails healthy human virtues, tastes, and habits like a drug and deranges one's ability to reason about reality and the good. Consumerism is intrinsically market-oriented and thus all about satisfying the desires of the market. In a hyperliberal culture that privatizes and relativizes morality and makes "freedom" from all restraint the ultimate end of human existence—full stop—that means the market is effectively god and that no desire can be wrong (in practice, this is complicated by the unfeasibility of ultimately attaining such a state of affairs). Naturally, hedonism doesn't sit still. Once it slakes its appetite for something, like a vampire, it wants to move onto something else. Its appetite only grows. Hedonism is a death spiral of indulgence of ever increasing depravity. In an amoral environment that produces people lacking proper moral and intellectual formation (apparently moral formation is "fascist"), and without at least the guardrails provided by law rightly understood, it is an easy death spiral to enter into. If life is seen as objectively without meaning, then all that remains is hedonism. Our age is full of nihilist thinly papered over with hedonistic distractions. So we're nihilists. We live in a nihilistic consumerist culture. Nihilism leads to nothingness and death.

cindyllm 4mo ago
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trumpdong 4mo ago

People who have children often report it being the most fulfilling thing they ever did, while other pleasures are temporary. So I don't know if I can buy this argument.

ip26 4mo ago
Hard to assign that a value before you are a parent though. You can only understand it in the abstract.
05 4mo ago
Or: boring people who have nothing fulfilling in their lives often report having children is the most fulfilling?

wonderwonder 4mo ago

My theory is different. Decades of officials telling people that the world was overpopulated. That global warming was going to kill us all and any children born would be subjected to horrific conditions. Well mission accomplished.

broken-kebab 4mo ago

For this theory to be plausible we need to imagine that hedonistic creatures couldn't find anything more hedonistic than caring for multiple kids before industrialization. It doesn't sound realistic, mildly speaking. The modern culture simply doesn't oblige you to marry, and procreate the way it did 1-2 (depending on where you are) generations before. In the times of my mother's youth not marrying before 25-26, and not having at least one kid before 30 could really negatively affect someone's social standing. There are segments of modern West where culture still prioritizes procreation (like Orthodox Jews you mention, or old school Catholics) and they do procreate successfully despite being the same creatures as everyone else. Preferred hedonism is in culture, not nature.

mrtksn 4mo ago

> more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children Close but it’s not about fun, it’s about exploring the new possibilities. There’s simply no time for having kids when you just transition to a new way of life and you don’t know what to do. You maybe want to travel the world or build a house etc so you work more and spend more towards these. The next gen is having more kids. Bulgaria used to be a prime example of population collapse but today has the highest birth rates in Europe(not just EU). The population will still shrink but as the dust settles people have certainty, know what to expect from life and can make a choice of having kids. Traveling the world can be just a phase in the early 20s, don’t have to grind as much for the basics, the definition of success isn’t getting rich through hard work so a simple and balanced life with kids becomes a feasible and desirable option.

firdunupsa2 4mo ago

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dyauspitr 4mo ago

It’s not that complicated. As soon as women are educated and have a choice of supporting themselves the birth rate drops. If you want a higher birth rate, stop educating women and disempower them. This is something republicans in the US intimately understand.

trumpdong 4mo ago
Can't decipher sarcasm level

stego-tech 4mo ago

It’s a valid theory, and I certainly think it’s a contributor, but I would also argue that the “boom” years of fertility in modernity have been tied to periods of widespread benefit for most, if not all. When prospective parents and grandparents see the potential for a brighter future, there’s more societal pressure to have kids because their success will naturally boost your own. Then when the vice starts tightening, the idea is that having more kids improves your own prospects of survival and comfort in old age. Then the systems of the world had to make a choice: pay for the old at the expense of the new, or support the new by capping benefits on the old. This takes the form of social welfare programs in most developed countries, but industrialization also clamped down wealth in the hands of those who owned the means of production, and kept it from the hands of labor absent mechanisms of redistribution. Industrialization by its nature necessitates a larger investment to begin competing with established players in ways former artisans and businesses lacked: machinery, labor, logistics, technology, real estate, and materials all require expensive, up-front, and lengthy investment before potential payoff in an industrialized world that pre-industry societies didn’t have to deal (as much) with, thus locking most Capital and wealth into the hands of those who already had it to begin with. An aristocracy on steroids, choking and hoarding the lifeblood of a healthy economy into their private coffers. This plays out differently in each country depending on its economic maturity and what function it served in the global marketplace, but the outcome was the same: with entertainment being plentiful and cheap compared to the immense risks and costs of child rearing in an increasingly dim future lacking in a cohesive, collaborative narrative to be inspired by, fertility collapsed.

smallmancontrov 4mo ago
"But we gave 1000 lucky participants $3.50 and a used bubblegum wrapper to share between them and it didn't measurably affect their marginal propensity to have children at all! Extractive economics couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fertility crisis!"

Ifkaluva 4mo ago

I’m going to try to win the award for the most controversial theory on this thread. The real reason we are having population shrinkage is because evolution did a crappy job. It didn’t tune us to want to have kids, it tuned us to want to have sex, and it linked to sex to reproduction. As we got smarter, and eventually develop contraception, we are essentially reward hacking evolution’s crude hack. What’s going to happen over the next few decades is that a few variants here and there are going to spread throughout the population that actually lead to more kids, not just through desire for sex. It will be a population crash, followed by a recovery.

accidentallfact 4mo ago
>I’m going to try to win the award for the most controversial theory on this thread. Extremely easy to beat that. You can see that global population used to stay at around half a billion until around 1700. The growth is a recent thing. So let me propose a more controversial theory - lead made people have a lot of children. You can't beat this.
- chrisco255 4mo ago
  Lead? Lead was used for millenia. The Romans made copious use of lead.
  - defrost 4mo ago
    And the Romans had many children? Humans had many offspring for millennia, humanity has had fewer offspring since lead has been banned. I'm not the one proposing the theory, but that's a correlation.
skissane 4mo ago
Last month, the US Census Bureau released their 2025 population estimates. In the ~5 years from April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025, it estimates Kiryas Joel's population grew from 32,956 to 47,147 – a 43.1% increase. [0] That's not spectacular in the figures themselves–you'll see bigger bumps when new suburbs are established–but it is spectacular in being almost all due to natural increase instead of migration. Evolution is still working, if we understand it as having both biological and cultural components. Give it a few centuries, and secular people will be outnumbered by ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the Amish, and radtrad Catholics, and Mormon polygamists, and so on. That's the thesis of Eric Kaufmann's 2010 book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? – and I believe, on the whole, he's right. [0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kiryasjoelvillagenewyork/PST04522 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kiryasjoelvilla...

mergetree 4mo ago

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BobbyTables2 4mo ago

Unless one gets a large van, daily life becomes less convenient beyond 2 kids. Midsize sedan/SUV aren’t great at more than 2 parents + 2 kids (especially with car seats!) Vacations are also more expensive since a lot of hotel rooms don’t allow more than 2 adults + 2 kids. More is also harder on the parents !

funofthegame 4mo ago
Hotel + plane flights is too expensive for large families. I try to drive and stay in Airbnbs, and then doesn't matter how many kids.

Drupon 4mo ago

>due to its Orthodox Jewish population and its use of United States tax dollars to fund social services that make it possible to raise their broods that American citizens simply don't get.

lenkite 4mo ago

And this is terrific news for the future. A nation of our size just cannot afford to have more than ~400 million people without severe issues causing extremely poor quality of life. We are already bursting at the seams at 1.5 billion and will be suffering deeply when it reaches 1.8 billion. (Also, the current adult population is higher than the official figures) We have severe water scarcity, severe deforestation, severe pollution - the list of problems is endless. Some of these problems are being covered up by our current government by stupid changes in measure - agriculture is now treated as "forestation".

epolanski 4mo ago

> and offering extensive support and incentives to parents Most studies show that support and incentives is borderline money thrown away if the incentive is to have more kids. You are giving money to people that would've had kids anyway.

epolanski 4mo ago

The massive change is the transformation of women's role in society and education. Essentially for pregnancies at 25 years old or later there are no number changes. Women of that age have as many kids as they ever had. But, pregnancies for very young women and teenagers has virtually disappeared. As women start having children much later, they simply have much less. As a millennial in southern Europe, the average age of our mothers in early 20s. 35 years later, the average age of first time mothers in my group is 33+. The article you're commenting points it out as well: > But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Schooling means that girls gain more autonomy and a greater say in life’s decisions.

Ampersander 4mo ago

Even with extensive support and subsidies from the state, having children is an economic loss for the individual in today's society. Back in agricultural society, having children was an economic gain, because you could put them to do work for you. Now if the state wants children it would need to pay both for the missed fun times and also the missed career opportunities that come from having children.

ZeroGravitas 4mo ago

From the abstract of your link 2: > As indicated by the results: (1) Family welfare policies notably boost fertility, and the boosting effect is long-lasting There appears to be a concerned effort to claim that incentivising raising children doesn't work. Clearly the people with (control of) the money don't feel like spending it on this.

zrn900 4mo ago

> My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. Or, as societies industrialize, life becomes more complex, time-consuming, and tiring than the simpler ways of life people were used to and able to manage...

markus_zhang 4mo ago

I’d argue that most of those support and incentives are barely enough in modern societies. In modern societies families are atomic. Parents don’t get support from grandparents very often and sometimes they don’t get any support. There is no community support either, or very very little unless you happen to belong in some ethnics. On the other hand, people are more aware these days and regulations are tougher, so you can’t do a lot of things back in the day, like my parents used to leave 4 years old me to my neighbours for work. So I’d argue that our society is actually more and more difficult for parents to give birth to babies, especially middle class parents because they don’t even enjoy much of financial support anyway — those goes to poorer families. And this becomes clearer if you look at wealth distribution. Nowadays, in my city, which is considered as the most affordable metropolitan in Canada, it is very difficult for working people to buy properties with median salaries — and rent has gone up too so you can’t say “just rent it”. All in all, I don’t know about Northern EU but it is harder and harder for working parents in Canada to have babies.

oliwarner 4mo ago

It's not just about fun. We are beaten into believing we need an education, a career, a home, stability before we have children. We're having kids in our 40s when our parents started in their 20s. We're naturally less able to have as many because menopause kicks in. There are no easy answers here. Younger pregnancy limits education and careers.

idontwantthis 4mo ago

I think this is close but misses the only thing that really matters: birth control makes it a choice. We are just 3 generations into being able to decide whether or not sex means kids. And making that positive choice takes a lot of energy.

analog31 4mo ago

"Hedonism" seems like an interesting term for a straightforward personal choice. I don't have a specific reference, but both affluence and a decline of childbirth seem to be related to improving the education and economic agency of women. Society can cope.

dpark 4mo ago
It seems like the right word. Hedonism doesn’t imply debauchery. It’s just prioritizing pleasure. It’s a hedonistic choice to forgo children in order to enjoy the pleasures of an unencumbered lifestyle. It’s also a personal choice (though I would not say it’s straightforward for most).
- littlexsparkee 4mo ago
  It's always invoked as if that makes life shallow - if avoiding pain (raising kids) is hedonism, then yeah I'm a hedonist. I'm not going to self-flagellate to appease society's desire for workers. Bad assumptions about demographics aren't a good reason for people to procreate, just to prolong a scheme that can't hold.
OhioMan2943 4mo ago
Does "coping" in this situation mean having 75% of any western countries young population foreign born and erasing thousands of years of culture and history?
- analog31 4mo ago
  Now in addition to preserving the economic order, people are responsible for preserving culture and history? That's too much to ask for. Cultures evolve. Our children might not choose to follow our culture. Even within any given western country, people disagree on what the indigenous culture consists of. My country has been described as being in the midst of a culture war.