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.
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.
Being alive is not enough for anyone to be happy. Would you have encouraged slaves in the US to have kids? (I know its exaggerated but Im just making a counterpoint)
Like the commenter above already said, there is no perfect time for parenthood, but when every passing month is consistently the worst of the past 50 years with no indication of improvement, I can understand how that makes people refrain.
My son was born last year and I am pretty confident that I can provide him with a relatively good life even if things get worse, but if we were living in the US, we would definitely not have kids right now.
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.
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.
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..
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
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.
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.
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?
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!.
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.
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.
Here's the thing: lower birth rates are actually a sign of a more developed country. There are a number of reasons for this. If you can't be sure if the system will properly take care of you in your late years, people tend to have more children so that there will be someone to take care of them in old age. If people (especially women) are better educated, there will be more of a focus on persuing careers, and children can be an impediment to that. Also, if people have better access to healthcare and birth control, many will use it. Just a couple of examples.
Lots of other comments talk about economic hardship. Yes, that’s part of the story, but there are very wealthy people in very wealthy countries who don’t have children. And there also are very poor people in very poor countries who have lots of children.
I guess the question I would ask is:
If economic hardship is your theory, why do very poor people in very poor countries have lots of children?
So the story is not entirely about money. It’s also about the factors you mentioned.
As the average income of a country goes up, birthrate goes down. That's just how humans are. We guess at reasons, but it's just a universally observable fact.
All high income industrialized nations developed low birthrates. North america, europe, japan, korea and now china.
If rich nations allow room for anyone else to claw their way up out of the low end of the value chain, we'll see the same thing happen there.
Here in Northern Sweden the preschools in the cities are all closing down due to lack of kids. We have the opposite problem in the villages. Long waiting lists and shortages. Our municipality, population 5000, has 6 existing preschools and just built a new one. City housing costs more than 3 times as much as the villages and small towns. Families can't afford housing in the city. It's all rich retired people in the larger houses and young single people in tiny apartments.
Anecdotally, I’d say money and the world would be the two big things.
People don’t have enough money to raise kids. Americans can’t afford to give birth with hospital bills. Childcare is expensive, but the alternative is no income. People can’t accumulate generational wealth, so there’s nothing to pass on, therefore no need for anyone to pass it to.
Environmental anxiety is real. Why bring kids into a world that’s about to burn?
Maybe one last factor is rebellion. A small sample I feel like chooses not to have kids so as not to perpetuate the system. The billionaires can’t exploit my kids if I don’t have any.
The fragmentation of multigenerational households. Without that support network, raising children is much harder and more expensive and much, much more daunting.
This isn't a bad thing, which is important to get out early because some far-right groups use it as an example for why we should wind back the clock.
Most women in advanced countries work, they have and want to have meaningful careers. Having children conflicts with that, in the immediate significant time off, and the long term impact of being the default parent when they have issues at school or are sick.
Lifestyles in advanced countries really rely on two incomes. Stopping work for a significant period to raise multiple children is a significant impact on that income, plus the long term expenses of the child combine to reduce that lifestyle. Not having children, or reducing the number, can be an economic choice.
The culture of both parents working also impacts the support network. Your working, your friends are working, the village is behind a desk not supporting you.
Finally women get a choice now, which is a change that is recent, isn't global and doesn't seem to be as widely acknowledged as it should be.
Society needs to change to address these issues and provide these missing supports. Which is going to take time, but as they are addressed we will probably see the birth rates start to climb again.
While I appreciate the optimism, I'm not sure that the historical data bears out that we will probably see the birthrates climb again when the supports are in place. This is a massive challenge for all of the Global North, but especially Japan, China, South Korea, and then all the way up in the "developed world." Some where around Panama, Indonesia, or Myanmar is where you see the 2.1 replacement rate (from 2024 data), so something close to 100 countries below 2.1 TFR.
Bribes have been tried (as in one time payments for kids). Child Care coverage has been tried. Other structural changes (like the Nordic dual parent paternity leave, or even time shifted paternity leave like France and others).
Maybe you mean more than just economic and governmental supports. As Claudia Goldin has said
"cultural changes around gender and women's autonomy are the primary drivers of fertility decline, not just economic factors that policies might address"
This is why, as an American, I'm so confused about the anti-immigration bonanza happening. It's not only against the American ethos, but shooting ourselves in the foot both economically and culturally. We need more people to make up for the future loss that is happening, and people from around the world have wanted to come. They pay for their worth in huge amounts (I'm already digressing so I won't paste more journals and such on this), and what's more if we want the economy to thrive and survive we need them... (Should we have a growth based economy is another question, that is worth asking, but again digression.)
Anyway, the point is Global North has tried and failed to address TFR, and no one has one that battle. Greater standard of living = lower TFR.
Yes, I think with women it's not just about "career or children". Regardless of being a "career woman" or not, more women than historically are choosing not to have kids or choosing not to settle for whoever comes along. So if they don't meet someone they really like they're more likely to walk away.
Social pressure around having kids absolutely still exists but it's definitely lower compared to any other time in history.
It's the same as how people instantly think divorce rates going up is a bad thing. But again, this is partly due to less social pressure and more people willing to break the previous social codes in which case it's a good thing that more people are leaving unhappy marriages.
I'm not sure the birth rates will climb significantly again. I think they will just even out steadily because there are people who have the choice to not have children now. And it's not just giving them the opportunity to manage it financially that will change that. Reducing it to economics still ignores part of the feminist, equality angle of the argument.
The main reason, that for some reason no one talked about yet, is that we developed and have effective and cheap contraceptives.
All other concerns are almost irrelevant. The truth is that we are very driven by immediate desires, and the "later" problem of having children goes out of the window when you're horny and have the opportunity to have sex. If there's no access to contraceptives, the choice between having sex and having children, or not having sex and no children, is almost always won by "having sex".
But if you can have access to contraceptives, you do not have to chose between sex and no sex anymore. The reality is just that children have always been more inconvenient than not. I'm sure if at any point in history (or even in a perfectly utopian society) if contraceptives were developed and made available, and weren't before, the same thing would happen.
Education time and income instability. People are well into their 30s before they know where to settle down after finishing an education. They're well into their 40s before they can afford to.
If any country wanted to increase childbirth rates, they ought to lower working time, increase education pay and move employment out of the central cities.
Or put simply: Money and time needs to be available for the people they want to reproduce.
Now, I just saw the latest Kurzgesagt episode on this, and there's one thing they missed: Automation.
We don't necessarily need to keep a stable or increasing population if only we can automate a lot more labour.
In my opinion it's the only solution to avoid the future population crisis.
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.
A little over a year ago I picked up my whole life and moved somewhere I'd dreamed of living for some time. A decision I made in a couple of hours while I was enjoying a little break in Las Vegas.
I've changed career several times, I spend lot of time in nature with my dog, I do the things that make me happy, whenever I choose to do so
I volunteer in my community, try to do things that are of benefit to society, rather than consuming, just for its own sake
Everything is so god damn expensive. And it gets worse every single day.
Don't worry though, no country is really worried about it yet because if they were they would work on making things not so obscenely fucking ridiculously expensive. (Although knowing rich bastards they'd probably just let humanity die out before they lost 5¢ on every sale)
Or at least give some sort if credit to you to lift the burden a bit. I think maybe South Korea is doing this and some Nordic countries and even China too I believe.
But still, if you have to get the calculator out and figure out how many meals you need to skip this month to be able to pay your bills I think having sex is the last thing on your mind.
Shit, most people probably ran their mates off already from the insane, soul crushing, non stop fucking stress that being able to never get ahead in your entire life brings. Bonus points if you already had a child with them, now you get to have 25% if your income stolen from you for the next 18 years (25 if they go to college) even if you see them more than they do in a lot of instances. That will sure get you in the mood.
And if not its still hard to want to fuck when you're hungry or when you're constantly about to lose it all and barely hanging on by a thread and obsessing about that reality in your head every single second of every single day.
TLDR: shit is too god damn expensive and it just keeps getting worse with absolutely no end in sight.
i personally am afraid that my child would live through a terrible future. also: i just dont feel like it. so maybe the existential anciety is more subconcious? idk
As quality of life rises there are more things competing for peoples interest as well as the cost of large raising a child being very high. Like if you're 25 and making money do you want to fly around the world creating experiences and having fun in the short term or do you want to save up your money to spend it all on your kids.
To increase births the recurring living costs need to go down, we need housing to ~20% rents or house prices. Maybe groceries down 10% and we're probably see an increase. Public daycare's becoming more common as well because that costs an arm and a leg.
Also im reason only leaving out working time because its not bad here averaging 37 hours per week with lots of holidays and paid maturinty leave and your job must be held open for you to return to.
The 25 year olds I know aren't choosing between kids and travel, they're choosing between kids and groceries.. rent is too high to make it on one income, even for a lot of my college educated peers.
japan and SOUTH korea have this insane work culture, that your lives or to live at your job, and must be drinking with t he bosses after. also heavily ostracized if you arnt making it in those countries. SK is apparently at a worst position than JAPAN birthwise goes.
china is currently have thier own crisis, thier 1-child policy has a created a deficiency of women , thats why they have become so obsessed of tracking womens lives, plus trying to "encourage sex. they also overproduce stem graduates with no job markets going around too. all this associated with HCOL as well.
plus the poor job markets for stem majors, even with tech laying off you can still find a job somewhere. but other stem have alot more requirements to enter the field. biotech, bio, Psyche if you think you can get away by not getting a PsyD or phd.
women getting education is a major factor of having less or no children, thats why there has been significant initiative in many universitis to help woman get experience in stem, like bio degrees. this does has unintentional effect of leaving men behind in bio specifically.
Over here in Spain it’s because of lack of funding. Theres little to no support for child care, if you have a kid here your either working tooth to the bone or off well and even still you only have 1 kid because 2 is too expensive.
This is a great question, and I highly recommend diving into this and it's implications. It's a sort of simple answer, but is really very complex with some deep fundamentals.
I went on a rant @lod's comment, which I maybe should have posted directly, but I've spent years digging in on this and it's impacts.
I'm happy to have direct conversations about it, but I have found out that Lemmy isn't the forum for more than simple direct answers.
One more thing. It's not that people don't have kids. They just have less kids. For example, in my apartment building out of 16 families, 2 have 3 kids, 8 have 2 kids, 2 have one kid and 4 don't have any kids. That looks fine but it's still way below replacement levels. Couple of decades ago we would see many families with 4-5 kids and vast majority would have more than two. Now majority of people stop at 1 or 2. For majority of people having more than 2 kids is hard to justify. You already have your family unit, why have more? Having 5 kids is considered weird now.
I mean I feel like these numbers have been decreasing since mortality rates increased. People used to have 5-10 kids because they knew they likely wouldn't all live through childhood. It makes sense that people realized that shift and that having 10 kids who survived wasn't easy! So yes that plus economics makes sense why most families are about 2 kids.
Or course, I'm just saying that what most people don't realize is that to reach the birthrate the governments are aiming for it's not enough for every single person to have a family. If every single person in the country got married and had two kids it would still not be enough. And of course you have all the single people, infertile people, gay couples and people that simply don't want kids so to offset that you need significant proportion of big families (4-5 kids) and this is seen as weird now. The family model that would let us hit replacement levels is simply outdated in most western countries.
Haha, it's interesting. I'm a lesbian, never had an interest in kids. My brother is straight, never been interested in kids. My sister is a lesbian and has had two kids (so far?). It's just interesting to see what different people see as the barriers/reasons for not having kids (not having a dig, it's genuinely interesting!)
That's where it would be fascinating to see the statistics laid out for so many things side by side; how many more LGBTQ people are having families than in the past, same with infertile people, single people (more rare but it happens!) and then the ways that it's decreased too elsewhere. There are groups who are having more kids than ever before - because it's more accessible (IVF) and then obviously groups that aren't.
Then of course the way that life expectancy has increased which is where the balance gets tricky and the numbers are important.
I'm also curious if 4-5 kid families are still more common in any western countries than others. I'm in Australia and agree that they're rare here now. I'd see 2 as the norm though I'm going to jump down a rabbit hole now 😅 🐇
I think only Israel is above replacement levels now. All the other developed countries have significantly lower birthrate than couple of decades ago. All the gay couples having kids and IVF is simply not enough to offset the loss of big families. And that's on top of the simple fact, that not having kids is socially acceptable now and people who don't want kids simply don't have them. To offset that we would need 3-4 kids to be the norm for a family, not 1-2.
And yes, detailed stats would be interesting. Let me know what you'll find :)
Yep, definitely not saying that we're not below the replacement numbers despite certain demographics having more access and increases! The replacement number itself is so generic.
It's based on developed country's requirements without taking migration into account. So it's not what most developed countries talking about declining birth rates, are actually aiming for. Australia, for example, is built on immigration, our goal being based on no immigration makes no sense! Other countries (Ireland for example) still have a high rate of emigration. A lot to take into consideration outside the very generic replacement number of 2.1 when you start to narrow it down 😅 You're right about Israel in terms of developed countries! They're sitting at ~2.9!
Some of the rhetoric I see seems to be that the birth rates have "suddenly" dropped which is far from accurate.
I'm looking at a couple of countries but particularly Australia. Contraception being introduced (early 60s) had a big effect as did the accessibility of abortion (70s). In fact, it appears that the biggest "sudden drop" actually occured through the 70s/early 80s. I wonder if they were speaking about it in the alarmist way we (society) do now.
Interestingly - Australia - teen pregnancies have dropped 75% since the 1970s. Gonna say this is a good thing about declining birth rates. 👏
I'm no data analyst but I think that it looks like the biggest factor for declining birth rates came with birth control. If not for that I think the graphs would look relatively stable with smaller fluctuations.
Australia actually had a small increase in the early 2020s! Still below 2.1 though!
I don't know, it's all very interesting. I think there are a lot of very good things about the birth rate having dropped. Found a study around the decreasing rate of "undesired births". Such a nuanced topic! I'm sure there's more numbers out there for individual countries about the projection around migration numbers needed rather than focusing on the generic replacement number.
I think contraception is kind of coincidence. The biggest change is society becoming less conservative. This meant that women were able to access contraception but it's no the main reason for drop of birthrate. Women starting careers means they are less interested in spending a decade or two raising 5 kids. Being single or living in informal relationship was also normalized. Basically the model of family where woman stays at home and has a kid every year or two was replaced by both parents working and sharing responsibilities. People have 1 or 2 kids to satisfy the need of having their own family unit and stop.
And yes, the replacement number is a fairly xenophobic concept. The narrative is that GDP has to keep growing. To constantly grow the economy you need more workers (or offset the decline with increased productivity but when population numbers fall fast that's difficult). So the narrative from capitalists is that we need to hit replacement levels or the economy will suffer. If people don't want to have kids then we will need immigrants and this is turned into replacement theory and used as propaganda by far right. So the far right wants to return to traditional family to save us from immigrants. And how do you return to traditional family? Less rights for women, harder access to contraception and abortion and, of course, no rights for same sex couples.
So right now in Europe Spain is for example openly saying their future depends on immigrants and is welcoming them (the current government does at least) while Poland is still very much opposed to any immigration and didn't make any social progress in decades (no same sex marriages, difficult access to IVF, banned abortion).
I think we need to accept that humans really just don't want (many) kids, and that the so-called 'urge to procreate' is really just the 'urge to have sex' - and unlike 500 years ago they are no longer the same thing. We can choose to have all the sex we want without becoming pregnant. That is what people want, and it has nothing to do with affordability.
Sure, money might be one factor of many for some people, but if money was really the main issue, then rich countries would have a higher fertility rate, right? Rich people would have more kids, right? Well, the opposite is true. People getting richer, more educated, having better access to healthcare, and last but not least: women obtaining more rights.. All of this has made it so people have fewer children. Are we really going to keep deluding ourselves and write it all off as a financial issue? People nowadays are not poorer than in the past. All throughout history poor people have been having kids. It's just that now they have a choice. And they choose not to.
tl;dr I think what has changed is that people (read: women) have a choice now and they simply choose not to have (as many) kids.
Lots of different reasons depending on the context of the person (lack of money, bleak future outlook, not wanting to pass down family trauma/bad genes etc)
Online, parents are candid about how crappy parenting is.
We can see this and learn from it.
Multiple times, I have seen parents sympathizing with other parents who have such an overwhelming urge to shake their baby that they have to abandon the kid and go to another room.
Many just don't want to, which is not fear. Only a few of those polled (across many countries) indicate fear (state of the world, fear of being a parent, etc) as being the reason. Egotism, insecurity, genetics, finances, etc are all some of the basis and they cannot all be boiled down to just fear. This is structural and cultural not just emotional.
I think one could argue that finances and job security play into the fear aspect, though. Fear that you can't afford a kid or that you might lose your job and consequently end up on the street with no one else to support you.
Education the more educated you are the likelihood you start too see how having children means responsibilities. That compounds with numbers and in turn money. Being uneducated would not have that thinking they would just shit out children like chickens. With little to no care for their upbringing.
Social pressure. Anywhere you go children are unwelcome.
Other than spaces specifically designated for children, you won't exactly be encouraged to bring your kids. Most activities people find necessary or fun like workplace, entertainment, travel, parties, etc, are exclusive of children.
And it doesn't work like that. "it takes a village to raise a child" as the saying goes. Raising children is not something that can be compartmentalized into a separate sphere of life, while you still perform all the activities you were used to or liked without them.
Add to that the cost of housing - you need to put those children somewhere - and you have the perfect storm.
This is a big one people don't acknowledge. I think a big part of it is that we have also moved away from church (not a bad thing!)
When people talk about religious people having more kids, it's not just quiverfull explanations! It's that church people accept being around kids at social events. We (non church people) lost all of our childless friends within about two years of having a kid. The lifestyles were just incompatible and they weren't ready to transition to daytime barbecues at the park. My church going sister? Kids are welcome at almost all of her social events, and she even attends women's groups that have free childcare.
Obviously you can build that kind of community outside of church, but it's not easy without the existing culture and infrastructure.
I personally think it is that western culture is a disease. We have lost our connection to nature. We don't have a community. We don't have a family. We are exceedingly living in Ayn Rands dystopian individualist bullshit and it is corrupting on the soul.
LOL, “Western culture is a disease?” Seriously? You label a huge number of the world’s cultures a disease and don’t think for a tenth of a second that you might be generalizing a bit? Painting with too broad a brush?
Man, grow up a bit before you start spouting off such ignorance online.
😅 right some hyperbole there or what! I actually don't disagree with the rest of that comment about nature and community but you really lose people by starting with wild statements like western culture is a disease! It's sad because they probably had some decent points (nature, community etc) but override that with the flair of the dramatic and it's hard to take seriously!
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?
Being alive is not enough for anyone to be happy. Would you have encouraged slaves in the US to have kids? (I know its exaggerated but Im just making a counterpoint)
No, that's fuckin dumb.
That's a good point, I guess.
Why are you so upset all of a sudden? Are you ok?
Like the commenter above already said, there is no perfect time for parenthood, but when every passing month is consistently the worst of the past 50 years with no indication of improvement, I can understand how that makes people refrain.
My son was born last year and I am pretty confident that I can provide him with a relatively good life even if things get worse, but if we were living in the US, we would definitely not have kids right now.
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.
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.
It will differ by country but I've seen some poll from Poland recently:
For those few that don't speak polish:
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.
My take is "How can I afford to have a kid when I can't even take care of myself?".
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
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.
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.
Have you seen how the world is doing?
Here are my reasons:
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
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.
Too expensive and career suicide.
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.
capitalism
Here's the thing: lower birth rates are actually a sign of a more developed country. There are a number of reasons for this. If you can't be sure if the system will properly take care of you in your late years, people tend to have more children so that there will be someone to take care of them in old age. If people (especially women) are better educated, there will be more of a focus on persuing careers, and children can be an impediment to that. Also, if people have better access to healthcare and birth control, many will use it. Just a couple of examples.
THIS.
Lots of other comments talk about economic hardship. Yes, that’s part of the story, but there are very wealthy people in very wealthy countries who don’t have children. And there also are very poor people in very poor countries who have lots of children.
I guess the question I would ask is:
So the story is not entirely about money. It’s also about the factors you mentioned.
As the average income of a country goes up, birthrate goes down. That's just how humans are. We guess at reasons, but it's just a universally observable fact.
All high income industrialized nations developed low birthrates. North america, europe, japan, korea and now china.
If rich nations allow room for anyone else to claw their way up out of the low end of the value chain, we'll see the same thing happen there.
That one was… artificially skewed.
Yeah for sure one child makes it a less clear example, but even post-one child, china shows the same trends as other rich nations.
Opportunity to do something else with your life. Kids are unaffordable. World is going to shit.
I know 30-somethings that live with their parents because they cannot afford their own house and there are no decent rental houses available either.
Here in Northern Sweden the preschools in the cities are all closing down due to lack of kids. We have the opposite problem in the villages. Long waiting lists and shortages. Our municipality, population 5000, has 6 existing preschools and just built a new one. City housing costs more than 3 times as much as the villages and small towns. Families can't afford housing in the city. It's all rich retired people in the larger houses and young single people in tiny apartments.
TL;DR: people don’t like being packed in like sardines. Give them space to have kids.
Anecdotally, I’d say money and the world would be the two big things.
People don’t have enough money to raise kids. Americans can’t afford to give birth with hospital bills. Childcare is expensive, but the alternative is no income. People can’t accumulate generational wealth, so there’s nothing to pass on, therefore no need for anyone to pass it to.
Environmental anxiety is real. Why bring kids into a world that’s about to burn?
Maybe one last factor is rebellion. A small sample I feel like chooses not to have kids so as not to perpetuate the system. The billionaires can’t exploit my kids if I don’t have any.
The fragmentation of multigenerational households. Without that support network, raising children is much harder and more expensive and much, much more daunting.
Feminism/Equality and the changes it has brought.
This isn't a bad thing, which is important to get out early because some far-right groups use it as an example for why we should wind back the clock.
Most women in advanced countries work, they have and want to have meaningful careers. Having children conflicts with that, in the immediate significant time off, and the long term impact of being the default parent when they have issues at school or are sick.
Lifestyles in advanced countries really rely on two incomes. Stopping work for a significant period to raise multiple children is a significant impact on that income, plus the long term expenses of the child combine to reduce that lifestyle. Not having children, or reducing the number, can be an economic choice.
The culture of both parents working also impacts the support network. Your working, your friends are working, the village is behind a desk not supporting you.
Finally women get a choice now, which is a change that is recent, isn't global and doesn't seem to be as widely acknowledged as it should be.
Society needs to change to address these issues and provide these missing supports. Which is going to take time, but as they are addressed we will probably see the birth rates start to climb again.
While I appreciate the optimism, I'm not sure that the historical data bears out that we will probably see the birthrates climb again when the supports are in place. This is a massive challenge for all of the Global North, but especially Japan, China, South Korea, and then all the way up in the "developed world." Some where around Panama, Indonesia, or Myanmar is where you see the 2.1 replacement rate (from 2024 data), so something close to 100 countries below 2.1 TFR.
Bribes have been tried (as in one time payments for kids). Child Care coverage has been tried. Other structural changes (like the Nordic dual parent paternity leave, or even time shifted paternity leave like France and others).
Maybe you mean more than just economic and governmental supports. As Claudia Goldin has said "cultural changes around gender and women's autonomy are the primary drivers of fertility decline, not just economic factors that policies might address"
This is why, as an American, I'm so confused about the anti-immigration bonanza happening. It's not only against the American ethos, but shooting ourselves in the foot both economically and culturally. We need more people to make up for the future loss that is happening, and people from around the world have wanted to come. They pay for their worth in huge amounts (I'm already digressing so I won't paste more journals and such on this), and what's more if we want the economy to thrive and survive we need them... (Should we have a growth based economy is another question, that is worth asking, but again digression.)
Anyway, the point is Global North has tried and failed to address TFR, and no one has one that battle. Greater standard of living = lower TFR.
Yes, I think with women it's not just about "career or children". Regardless of being a "career woman" or not, more women than historically are choosing not to have kids or choosing not to settle for whoever comes along. So if they don't meet someone they really like they're more likely to walk away.
Social pressure around having kids absolutely still exists but it's definitely lower compared to any other time in history.
It's the same as how people instantly think divorce rates going up is a bad thing. But again, this is partly due to less social pressure and more people willing to break the previous social codes in which case it's a good thing that more people are leaving unhappy marriages.
I'm not sure the birth rates will climb significantly again. I think they will just even out steadily because there are people who have the choice to not have children now. And it's not just giving them the opportunity to manage it financially that will change that. Reducing it to economics still ignores part of the feminist, equality angle of the argument.
The main reason, that for some reason no one talked about yet, is that we developed and have effective and cheap contraceptives.
All other concerns are almost irrelevant. The truth is that we are very driven by immediate desires, and the "later" problem of having children goes out of the window when you're horny and have the opportunity to have sex. If there's no access to contraceptives, the choice between having sex and having children, or not having sex and no children, is almost always won by "having sex".
But if you can have access to contraceptives, you do not have to chose between sex and no sex anymore. The reality is just that children have always been more inconvenient than not. I'm sure if at any point in history (or even in a perfectly utopian society) if contraceptives were developed and made available, and weren't before, the same thing would happen.
Education time and income instability. People are well into their 30s before they know where to settle down after finishing an education. They're well into their 40s before they can afford to.
If any country wanted to increase childbirth rates, they ought to lower working time, increase education pay and move employment out of the central cities.
Or put simply: Money and time needs to be available for the people they want to reproduce.
Now, I just saw the latest Kurzgesagt episode on this, and there's one thing they missed: Automation. We don't necessarily need to keep a stable or increasing population if only we can automate a lot more labour. In my opinion it's the only solution to avoid the future population crisis.
I know what you mean, but your queetion is incorrectly phrased
My personal reason is impossibly stressful, abusing, stealing and raping legal system and the society we face.
Otherwise I would have 10 kids
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.
I really, really dislike children
I have an amazing life, and the way I live is completely incompatible with kids, even if I wanted them
More people are realising that it's not compulsory to breed, and that they can have vastly better lives without children
Sounds awesome. What do you do?
Pretty much whatever I want to
A little over a year ago I picked up my whole life and moved somewhere I'd dreamed of living for some time. A decision I made in a couple of hours while I was enjoying a little break in Las Vegas.
I've changed career several times, I spend lot of time in nature with my dog, I do the things that make me happy, whenever I choose to do so
I volunteer in my community, try to do things that are of benefit to society, rather than consuming, just for its own sake
That is awesome. But how is this incompatible with kids?
They'd reduce my ability to do things on a whim
They'd reduce my free time
They'd reduce my finances
They'd reduce my will to live
Ah. It's a you thing. Not a kids thing. Got it.
I stated clearly that I have an intense dislike for kids
They would add no value to my life
Exactly. None of this is incompatible with having children. Children are incompatible with you.
Good decision not having kids.
Do you really want to be asking that 🤔
Fists people. But in all seriousness, it looks like their favorite thing to do is be a dick to people on Lemmy.
Probably best they stay away from children.
Only to stupid, or ignorant people
Oh, no way you just said that! No way, dude! I can't believe you just said that!
show proof and scientific studies or shut up liar edit. downvoting is not proof stupid frog
Do you have a crush on me?
You're following me around like a little puppy
It's cute
Everything is so god damn expensive. And it gets worse every single day.
Don't worry though, no country is really worried about it yet because if they were they would work on making things not so obscenely fucking ridiculously expensive. (Although knowing rich bastards they'd probably just let humanity die out before they lost 5¢ on every sale)
Or at least give some sort if credit to you to lift the burden a bit. I think maybe South Korea is doing this and some Nordic countries and even China too I believe.
But still, if you have to get the calculator out and figure out how many meals you need to skip this month to be able to pay your bills I think having sex is the last thing on your mind.
Shit, most people probably ran their mates off already from the insane, soul crushing, non stop fucking stress that being able to never get ahead in your entire life brings. Bonus points if you already had a child with them, now you get to have 25% if your income stolen from you for the next 18 years (25 if they go to college) even if you see them more than they do in a lot of instances. That will sure get you in the mood.
And if not its still hard to want to fuck when you're hungry or when you're constantly about to lose it all and barely hanging on by a thread and obsessing about that reality in your head every single second of every single day.
TLDR: shit is too god damn expensive and it just keeps getting worse with absolutely no end in sight.
i personally am afraid that my child would live through a terrible future. also: i just dont feel like it. so maybe the existential anciety is more subconcious? idk
As quality of life rises there are more things competing for peoples interest as well as the cost of large raising a child being very high. Like if you're 25 and making money do you want to fly around the world creating experiences and having fun in the short term or do you want to save up your money to spend it all on your kids.
To increase births the recurring living costs need to go down, we need housing to ~20% rents or house prices. Maybe groceries down 10% and we're probably see an increase. Public daycare's becoming more common as well because that costs an arm and a leg.
Also im reason only leaving out working time because its not bad here averaging 37 hours per week with lots of holidays and paid maturinty leave and your job must be held open for you to return to.
The 25 year olds I know aren't choosing between kids and travel, they're choosing between kids and groceries.. rent is too high to make it on one income, even for a lot of my college educated peers.
japan and SOUTH korea have this insane work culture, that your lives or to live at your job, and must be drinking with t he bosses after. also heavily ostracized if you arnt making it in those countries. SK is apparently at a worst position than JAPAN birthwise goes.
china is currently have thier own crisis, thier 1-child policy has a created a deficiency of women , thats why they have become so obsessed of tracking womens lives, plus trying to "encourage sex. they also overproduce stem graduates with no job markets going around too. all this associated with HCOL as well.
plus the poor job markets for stem majors, even with tech laying off you can still find a job somewhere. but other stem have alot more requirements to enter the field. biotech, bio, Psyche if you think you can get away by not getting a PsyD or phd.
women getting education is a major factor of having less or no children, thats why there has been significant initiative in many universitis to help woman get experience in stem, like bio degrees. this does has unintentional effect of leaving men behind in bio specifically.
Cost of living
There's only one culprit here, and it's 100% responsible for this phenomenon: Countries can't have children. Only People can have children.
Isn't it obvious?
They don’t want to.
Over here in Spain it’s because of lack of funding. Theres little to no support for child care, if you have a kid here your either working tooth to the bone or off well and even still you only have 1 kid because 2 is too expensive.
This is a great question, and I highly recommend diving into this and it's implications. It's a sort of simple answer, but is really very complex with some deep fundamentals.
I went on a rant @lod's comment, which I maybe should have posted directly, but I've spent years digging in on this and it's impacts.
I'm happy to have direct conversations about it, but I have found out that Lemmy isn't the forum for more than simple direct answers.
I hope you get some great answers though!
Because landmasses don't have reproductive organs with which to procreate.
*coughFloridacoughcough*
*coughcoughCornwallcough*
Capitalism
One more thing. It's not that people don't have kids. They just have less kids. For example, in my apartment building out of 16 families, 2 have 3 kids, 8 have 2 kids, 2 have one kid and 4 don't have any kids. That looks fine but it's still way below replacement levels. Couple of decades ago we would see many families with 4-5 kids and vast majority would have more than two. Now majority of people stop at 1 or 2. For majority of people having more than 2 kids is hard to justify. You already have your family unit, why have more? Having 5 kids is considered weird now.
I mean I feel like these numbers have been decreasing since mortality rates increased. People used to have 5-10 kids because they knew they likely wouldn't all live through childhood. It makes sense that people realized that shift and that having 10 kids who survived wasn't easy! So yes that plus economics makes sense why most families are about 2 kids.
Or course, I'm just saying that what most people don't realize is that to reach the birthrate the governments are aiming for it's not enough for every single person to have a family. If every single person in the country got married and had two kids it would still not be enough. And of course you have all the single people, infertile people, gay couples and people that simply don't want kids so to offset that you need significant proportion of big families (4-5 kids) and this is seen as weird now. The family model that would let us hit replacement levels is simply outdated in most western countries.
Haha, it's interesting. I'm a lesbian, never had an interest in kids. My brother is straight, never been interested in kids. My sister is a lesbian and has had two kids (so far?). It's just interesting to see what different people see as the barriers/reasons for not having kids (not having a dig, it's genuinely interesting!)
That's where it would be fascinating to see the statistics laid out for so many things side by side; how many more LGBTQ people are having families than in the past, same with infertile people, single people (more rare but it happens!) and then the ways that it's decreased too elsewhere. There are groups who are having more kids than ever before - because it's more accessible (IVF) and then obviously groups that aren't.
Then of course the way that life expectancy has increased which is where the balance gets tricky and the numbers are important.
I'm also curious if 4-5 kid families are still more common in any western countries than others. I'm in Australia and agree that they're rare here now. I'd see 2 as the norm though I'm going to jump down a rabbit hole now 😅 🐇
I think only Israel is above replacement levels now. All the other developed countries have significantly lower birthrate than couple of decades ago. All the gay couples having kids and IVF is simply not enough to offset the loss of big families. And that's on top of the simple fact, that not having kids is socially acceptable now and people who don't want kids simply don't have them. To offset that we would need 3-4 kids to be the norm for a family, not 1-2.
And yes, detailed stats would be interesting. Let me know what you'll find :)
Yep, definitely not saying that we're not below the replacement numbers despite certain demographics having more access and increases! The replacement number itself is so generic.
It's based on developed country's requirements without taking migration into account. So it's not what most developed countries talking about declining birth rates, are actually aiming for. Australia, for example, is built on immigration, our goal being based on no immigration makes no sense! Other countries (Ireland for example) still have a high rate of emigration. A lot to take into consideration outside the very generic replacement number of 2.1 when you start to narrow it down 😅 You're right about Israel in terms of developed countries! They're sitting at ~2.9!
Some of the rhetoric I see seems to be that the birth rates have "suddenly" dropped which is far from accurate.
I'm looking at a couple of countries but particularly Australia. Contraception being introduced (early 60s) had a big effect as did the accessibility of abortion (70s). In fact, it appears that the biggest "sudden drop" actually occured through the 70s/early 80s. I wonder if they were speaking about it in the alarmist way we (society) do now.
Interestingly - Australia - teen pregnancies have dropped 75% since the 1970s. Gonna say this is a good thing about declining birth rates. 👏
I'm no data analyst but I think that it looks like the biggest factor for declining birth rates came with birth control. If not for that I think the graphs would look relatively stable with smaller fluctuations.
Australia actually had a small increase in the early 2020s! Still below 2.1 though!
I don't know, it's all very interesting. I think there are a lot of very good things about the birth rate having dropped. Found a study around the decreasing rate of "undesired births". Such a nuanced topic! I'm sure there's more numbers out there for individual countries about the projection around migration numbers needed rather than focusing on the generic replacement number.
A few of the sources I read;
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/historical-population/latest-release
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12205728/
https://www.id.com.au/insights/articles/australias-birth-rate-increases-for-the-first-time-in-10-years/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7834459/
I think contraception is kind of coincidence. The biggest change is society becoming less conservative. This meant that women were able to access contraception but it's no the main reason for drop of birthrate. Women starting careers means they are less interested in spending a decade or two raising 5 kids. Being single or living in informal relationship was also normalized. Basically the model of family where woman stays at home and has a kid every year or two was replaced by both parents working and sharing responsibilities. People have 1 or 2 kids to satisfy the need of having their own family unit and stop.
And yes, the replacement number is a fairly xenophobic concept. The narrative is that GDP has to keep growing. To constantly grow the economy you need more workers (or offset the decline with increased productivity but when population numbers fall fast that's difficult). So the narrative from capitalists is that we need to hit replacement levels or the economy will suffer. If people don't want to have kids then we will need immigrants and this is turned into replacement theory and used as propaganda by far right. So the far right wants to return to traditional family to save us from immigrants. And how do you return to traditional family? Less rights for women, harder access to contraception and abortion and, of course, no rights for same sex couples.
So right now in Europe Spain is for example openly saying their future depends on immigrants and is welcoming them (the current government does at least) while Poland is still very much opposed to any immigration and didn't make any social progress in decades (no same sex marriages, difficult access to IVF, banned abortion).
I think we need to accept that humans really just don't want (many) kids, and that the so-called 'urge to procreate' is really just the 'urge to have sex' - and unlike 500 years ago they are no longer the same thing. We can choose to have all the sex we want without becoming pregnant. That is what people want, and it has nothing to do with affordability.
Sure, money might be one factor of many for some people, but if money was really the main issue, then rich countries would have a higher fertility rate, right? Rich people would have more kids, right? Well, the opposite is true. People getting richer, more educated, having better access to healthcare, and last but not least: women obtaining more rights.. All of this has made it so people have fewer children. Are we really going to keep deluding ourselves and write it all off as a financial issue? People nowadays are not poorer than in the past. All throughout history poor people have been having kids. It's just that now they have a choice. And they choose not to.
tl;dr I think what has changed is that people (read: women) have a choice now and they simply choose not to have (as many) kids.
You're absolutely right
There's a reason why decreased "fertility" is correlated with women becoming more educated, not men
I'm not in most countries
Lots of different reasons depending on the context of the person (lack of money, bleak future outlook, not wanting to pass down family trauma/bad genes etc)
Online, parents are candid about how crappy parenting is.
We can see this and learn from it.
Multiple times, I have seen parents sympathizing with other parents who have such an overwhelming urge to shake their baby that they have to abandon the kid and go to another room.
Data doesn't support that at all.
Many just don't want to, which is not fear. Only a few of those polled (across many countries) indicate fear (state of the world, fear of being a parent, etc) as being the reason. Egotism, insecurity, genetics, finances, etc are all some of the basis and they cannot all be boiled down to just fear. This is structural and cultural not just emotional.
I think one could argue that finances and job security play into the fear aspect, though. Fear that you can't afford a kid or that you might lose your job and consequently end up on the street with no one else to support you.
I didn't want to have kids, and I was pretty vocal about it to my wife. Regrettably, my kids heard what I said and were pretty upset.
I don't care what your rules are about replying to yourself. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. ;) I love you anyway.
Education the more educated you are the likelihood you start too see how having children means responsibilities. That compounds with numbers and in turn money. Being uneducated would not have that thinking they would just shit out children like chickens. With little to no care for their upbringing.
Social pressure. Anywhere you go children are unwelcome.
Other than spaces specifically designated for children, you won't exactly be encouraged to bring your kids. Most activities people find necessary or fun like workplace, entertainment, travel, parties, etc, are exclusive of children.
And it doesn't work like that. "it takes a village to raise a child" as the saying goes. Raising children is not something that can be compartmentalized into a separate sphere of life, while you still perform all the activities you were used to or liked without them.
Add to that the cost of housing - you need to put those children somewhere - and you have the perfect storm.
This is a big one people don't acknowledge. I think a big part of it is that we have also moved away from church (not a bad thing!)
When people talk about religious people having more kids, it's not just quiverfull explanations! It's that church people accept being around kids at social events. We (non church people) lost all of our childless friends within about two years of having a kid. The lifestyles were just incompatible and they weren't ready to transition to daytime barbecues at the park. My church going sister? Kids are welcome at almost all of her social events, and she even attends women's groups that have free childcare.
Obviously you can build that kind of community outside of church, but it's not easy without the existing culture and infrastructure.
As far as i am aware every country on this planet has kids
Hmm...
I personally think it is that western culture is a disease. We have lost our connection to nature. We don't have a community. We don't have a family. We are exceedingly living in Ayn Rands dystopian individualist bullshit and it is corrupting on the soul.
LOL, “Western culture is a disease?” Seriously? You label a huge number of the world’s cultures a disease and don’t think for a tenth of a second that you might be generalizing a bit? Painting with too broad a brush?
Man, grow up a bit before you start spouting off such ignorance online.
😅 right some hyperbole there or what! I actually don't disagree with the rest of that comment about nature and community but you really lose people by starting with wild statements like western culture is a disease! It's sad because they probably had some decent points (nature, community etc) but override that with the flair of the dramatic and it's hard to take seriously!
I mean maybe, but the birth rate is falling everywhere right? Not just the perfidious western pigdogs
So what’s your contribution as a better solution?
This is such a tired old cliché I'm sure it'll do great at the Hollywood box office.