Countries are just arbitrary pieces of land and cannot produce offspring. 😌
But what happens when a daddy country and a mommy country gets really close and start to have feelings?
War.
Late stage capitalism.
Having kids is really expensive and insane amount of responsibility. Childcare is a full time job - so you need to go one worker per family, or be able to afford paying for it.And it also becomes recursive I think.
People want to be good parents. But in late stage capitalism, that means setting your children up to succeed in that environment. If people struggle to set themselves up as parents, they can’t have faith that they’ll be able to set their children up such that there’s just no point. Especially if you start thinking about the future and whether your grandkids could even be ok.
As someone living in the USA going into my late 30s still without kids, you nailed it. We’ve been married for 10 years. In a different world, we might have had a kid at some point in the last 5, but between covid and climate change and the second Trump term and the general sense that everything is about to implode, it doesn’t really make us feel inspired to try.
To be clear, at the moment we have everything we would need to be parents if we wanted to. But the prospect of subjecting a kid to young adulthood in the 2040s seems brutal. We’re what I would consider “nudge-able” into having a kid or two, but the world keeps giving us nothing but nudges in the direction of choosing to be childfree for life.
Random example from this year: we keep getting barraged with news slop about how our jobs are about to all be replaced by LLMs or the economy is about to collapse under the weight of the LLM bubble. Not particularly reassuring. I realize there’s no perfect time to have kids and tons of people make it work, but as a couple who have always been in the “maybe” camp, inaction feels like the only thing a logical person would choose, year after year after year.
We don’t have many years left where it’s actually viable, and frankly I can’t imagine it’s going to change.
This is what happened to my wife and me. We kept waiting and delaying because shit sucked and now… we can’t. Nature made the decision for us, much to the dismay of my parents but to the joy of my bank account.
I’m sorry, but every human being from every generation has suffered from fear for their children. The future is always unknown. There’s always been a looming future doom. The future of the climate is unprecedented, but so was the advent of the nuclear bomb. So was the advent of the trebuchet. So was the advent of steel.
The only certainty about the future is uncertainty. While absolutely terrifying, my view on it was even though it’s scary, I’ll give it a shot.
I do fear for my children’s future, but so has every human who ever had children. I enjoy the here and now and carry the hope that masses truly care for each other and always will.
Historically that hope doesn’t bear out but good for you, if not for your children.
You’re here. Is that not enough hope?
No, that’s fuckin dumb.
That’s a good point, I guess.
Why are you so upset all of a sudden? Are you ok?
Yeah, people used to have a bunch of kids because they could help with work. It wasn’t profitable, but they at least offset some of their own expenses by the end, and were often relied upon for all the work to get done. Now it’s just fully another job and another expense; few people want to put in the work on top of all the other work they still need to do, and pay for the privilege.
Oh i can sing you a song of this :)
Adding to that thought, you used to also have grandparents and elder family members who had the time and inclination to help out. This was especially true for those of us who were born to boomers. But now those people of that same age are having to work as things like greeters at Walmart just to be able to pay their own bills. So they don’t have the leisure time anymore to assist with raising grandchildren.
Or they just dont care and have conpletely different values. My parents arent even half the grandparents that their parents were.
We are living through the collapse of capitalism. Countries will fall I to 1 of 2 categories in response.
- Socialist
- Fascist
Given most countries are lead by the hyper rich, expect to see most being forcibly directed to #2
Nowadays, it’s expected and often necessary for both people in a relationship to work full-time and have a career if they want to maintain a decent living standard. No time or money for having kids.
I’m sure there are other factors too, but this is a big one for sure.
Just looking at my family, both my parents had a stay at home mom and 3 siblings. Me and all my cousins have at most 1 sibling, with both our parents working but we always had two grandmas that could watch us if needed.
Had I kept the same timetable as my parents, my hypothetical kids would have had not just both parents working full time, but all grandparents too!
I agree I suspect this is a big one. 100% two income families are going to have less kids, and less time, and more income (hence as countries get richer they have fewer children)
But a career is less and less a woman’s choice and more and more it’s a requirement.
If average families could get by on one income with a decent standard of living I’m sure more women would decide to stay at home or work part time. I know at least one that would anyway…
Only get pregnant if you can afford it.
OK
No, not like that
The cost of living is too high. Having children is really expensive and you have to worry about whether they’ll make it as adults or whether things will be even worse then
This, 1000%. Every study I’ve looked at states the current economy makes having children more of a drain than a gain.
I can’t prove it but I suspect that they are having about as many children as they want and our expectations of ‘fertility rates’ are actually skewed by the number of unwanted pregnancies that were forced on people who then existed in the space of ‘We didn’t ask for this but now we love the little shit so I guess we’ll make the best of it.’ The world is and has been changing so fast for the last century or so that our sense of long term trends is much harder to understand.
My take is “How can I afford to have a kid when I can’t even take care of myself?”.
It will differ by country but I’ve seen some poll from Poland recently:
For those few that don’t speak polish:
- I don’t need kids (37%)
- I can’t afford it (20%)
- I’m worried about wars and instability (14%)
- Poorly working healthcare system (13%)
- I don’t have the right partner
- I’m worried about unemployment
- Not enough support form the government
- Being a parent is too hard
- I’m worried about climate change
- Other (20%)
- I don’t know (14%)
don’t need kids
rather just be the fun uncle/auntie, borrow them for a weekend and enjoy the fun times.
Let the parents deal with the daily childhood drama
As an uncle, I approve. I used to buy them loud noise making toys or some shooting thing to play outside. Go have fun and annoy your parents.
This is a great data pull btw. This is similar across much of the Global North.
This sort of track. I can identify with a lot of these answers at various times in my life.
It really does seem to be a combination of things.
As a middle aged person I’d also say that most people I know with kids were surprised for the first, or very religious.
Countries can’t have children, they’re not alive.
Check out the big brain on BreadOven
Thebes begs to differ.
For being alive or bearing children?
Bearing children. The founder, Cadmus, killed a dragon and buried the teeth in the ground and from that were “born” the Spartoi, fully grown and armed. They fought until only the strongest remained who then sired the noble houses of Thebes.
We’re like pandas in captivity. We’ll fuck if the conditions are right. They haven’t been right in a loooooong time. A little bit of enrichment in our enclosures would help tremendously.
Late stage capitalism.
When it is already hard to save up and buy a house before it’s too late for you and your partner to be capable of conceiving, is it any surprise?
I know plenty of people who would have a kid but don’t because they simply can’t afford to
Have you seen how the world is doing?
Here are my reasons:
- We are already starting to feel the effects of global warming, it will only get worse and people don’t take it serious. Why should Ibput another soul into this world just to suffer from the stupidity of others?
- Child care is super expensive and quality isn’t great and being a stay at home parent isn’t really an option if you want too keep up in the work market place.
- Why should I have a kid, if I’m not gonna spend time with them? I mean to feed them & offer them all the anemities, me and my partner would need to work full-time, so when are we gonna spend time with our kid?
- edit see bellow why.
- I like my freedoms.
- The schooling system is shit. Why should I raise kids in a society that starts the “grind” at age 5 and keeps you going until you are 65?
- etc.
we all dream of having […] neurotypical, cis kids, but it’s a high possibility of that not being the case.
Is that a personal gripe of yours of there being more recognition for more neurodivergent and transgender recognition?
Oohhhhh shit, I worded that one horribly… my add brain fucked it up and it came out so worng… I first wanted We all dream of having healthy kids but what if they are not (thinking of cancers or other medical diseases) and than a second bullet point as in, what if your kid is not neurotypical or non cis (queer) are you able to deal with everything that comes with? (Thinking of how bad society has turned against them in the past few years with the rise of the far right and how dificult it is tobstand up for peoples rights).
I truly have nothing against neurospicy and queer people. I know the way I worded it was terrible, and should I have offended anyone, I’m terribly sorry. Also thank you for pointing it out!.
Ok cool, I wasn’t sure so I figured I’d ask rather than accuse
Other activities outcompete children.
The other points like difficulty and money are valid but I think primarily kids are just not worth it for many and they’d rather travel or just have their own time which imo should be a perfectly acceptable take.
That’s for the first child but once you got one the barrier for more is almost always finance or pregnancy difficulties. Kids don’t scale as well as they used to.
You can only raise kids properly if you can afford it.
I don’t think you’re wrong, but poor people never being able to have children would certainly be… Problematic. My forefathers were by no means well off, but having children was (and in many countries still is) seen as way to ensure your own health and safety as you grow older. Sadly, our society is no longer designed for families to thrive. Instead we work for others so we can pay people to look after our loved ones. It’s pretty fucked up when you think about it.
I, too, think all people should be able to raise kids. That society makes it practically impossible is the problem.
You might call me old-fashioned, but being able to have one person at home to care for the kids and actually raise them is something that I consider a cornerstone.
Why put kids in the world, just to have to provide for them and have other people raise them, because you cannot afford to do this yourself?
It’s one of the great scams that industry pulled off - deriding staying home with a family as somehow failing and getting both parents out to the grind. Then selling it as progressive. I’m in favour of equal opportunity in the workplace, but we’ve been left with the worst of both worlds.
Economic.
Where it takes a young couple 80 hours of paid labor per week just to maintain a lower-middle class lifestyle, kids become an unaffordable luxury in a traditional family. When 40 hours of paid labor can comfortably support a family, that couple starts having kids.
UBI corrects the problem in multiple ways. It meets the basic needs of the family, so that their own income is immediately gainful.
UBI removes “starvation” as a motivation for labor. A drowning man will drag his wife, kids, and even his rescuers underwater with him, just for one more breath of air in his lungs. The desperate laborer will accept whatever pittance he is offered for his time, because that pittance is better than foregoing medical coverage, or the roof over his head, or enough food. In accepting that pittance, this desperate worker establishes the market value of labor, and drags down the compensation of everyone around him. A UBI relieves the majority of his desperation, and frees him to walk away from exploitative employers. That skinflint employer is forced to either offer a reasonable wage, or go out of business.
A UBI is a “Citizenship Dividend” - a payment for the use of Democratically-derived political powers. It is payment for the individual’s (compulsory) investment in his or her government, allowing that government to provide services to and collect taxes and fees from non-person, corporate entities on our behalf.
