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 know 30-somethings that live with their parents because they cannot afford their own house and there are no decent rental houses available either.
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.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 :)
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?
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
Too expensive and career suicide.
Removed by mod
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 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…
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!
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:
- 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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
This is a great data pull btw. This is similar across much of the Global North.
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.
Only get pregnant if you can afford it.
OK
No, not like that
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
