The article fails to mention France which is managing the low children crisis better than most.
Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten).
Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
I'm a parent of two young children, a 3 years old and a 6 months old. This is the hardest period of my life since high school.
I'm 34 and in our circles I'm the youngest dad. Most of other dads' are in their late 30s all the way to early 50s.
Yet I do feel I'm making a difference, especially considering that I'm Italian (high longevity + few children).
I've been also inspired by my choices of parenthood by the movie IDIOCRACY:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
I was delighted when I red in the Elon Musk biography that he had also saw the movie and that was also one of the reasons for being a parent of multiple kids.
How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less? Because we are more productive than ever. No thanks on more government-run programs for daycare facilities. No thanks to making participation mandatory at 3 years old for compulsory education outside the home. I prefer they give direct cash to parents in the form of more generous direct payments like they were doing for the last year and a half during the pandemic, thereby empowering parents to make the best decision for their own households. Idgaf about Macron until he publicly gives an account for why France was degrading its nuclear plants prematurely and failing to build more in a timely fashion. And he should also talk about what France will contribute to NATO in the form of defense budget spending as a share of GDP, along with Germany and other western European countries that were slacking off for years. He can otherwise shut up about compulsive kindgarten at 3 rather than 6, because that is subversion of parental authority.
More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation. Now you advocate for them to have more control and say over education by recommending more of their services? Nah, way more efficient, empowering, and aligned with freedom & democracy if parents in a household just get direct cash every month rather than government-run facilities. No thanks. Way too many problems with more gov. Give cash instead, solve the problem. And foster good working environment so wages go up and people can choose to work less and still have a family.
AFAIK French policy was driven by mothers that want to continue working. Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours even if it was paid well.
That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
> He can otherwise shut up about compulsive kindgarten at 3 rather than 6, because that is subversion of parental authority.
How does replacing one form of authoritarianism with another, perhaps preferable to some, form of authoritarianism make things better?
> More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
As opposed to shitty private sector programs run by profiteers?
> We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation.
> How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less?
If you want people generally to work less and earn more, how are you going to reduce the amount of work there is for them to do? Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford (inflation? What dat?) if less work is being done to provide them? Sounds fascinating.
There are a number of issues mixed together here so it is easy to attack. However, the main argument: direct cash with increased privatization vs public services is valid and should not be rejected out of hand. This approach could work better - at least it is not guaranteed to be worse.
Preschool in my district is 4 days a week, 2.5hrs / day.
That's a JOKE. Meant only for people who don't work.
But they also got another levy on taxes for "technology" and "new buildings".
They don't need more money, they just need to better spend the money they have.
Private daycare costs around $2000/month. That's more than tuition on the university ($1000/month or so).
So I just wish that once kids are in preschool age the preschool offered something reasonable
Also, have i mentioned that public preschool is not free? On top of taxes, we pay $400/month or so for 4 days a week, 2.5hrs/day preschool. It's nuts.
Oh, and they insert a random "teacher development days" where preschool is closed. Can't they do development in summer, when the school is closed anyway?
> Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten).
There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal. They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
Also giving you children to the state to be taught is somewhat disturbing.
EDIT: By deferring to others to teach your children, they won’t learn your culture, traditions and will (statistically) be worse off than if you teach them yourself.
My wife and I settled on making less money (still more than enough), but raising our kids ourselves. It’s hard, but easily the most rewarding thing. Plus our kids are WAY ahead in most areas. Imagine, your children are learning from other children all day at school... is that better than learning from adults all day? No.
When they get older we will probably consider a “pod” or one teacher for 6-8 kids with a family we know. You can pay the teacher far more and the parents can be more involved (we can effectively dictate the curriculum). I’m also planning on having my kids help me with work by 8-10. They can learn to participate and be productive far earlier.
> There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal.
I believe this isn't correct. Homeschooling is legal in France, although restricted. You need to be able to prove your kids are receiving a proper education.
> They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
I also think this is incorrect. Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.
Homeschooling is a super american thing and tbh, should not be allowed. If you're so scared of your children ever interacting with anyone apart from you, you probably shouldn't be a parent.
It’s interesting that you say this because, and this doesn’t change my opinion about its value, education is strongly correlated with a decrease in birth rates in developing and developed countries. There’s also a strong correlation between high marks at a young age and high degrees of success later in life, regardless of grades or performance in between. Taken together, Macron’s policy could actuallly harm the birth rate.
I completely agree that families should get more support. I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.
My own intuition is that the norm of both parents working is hard on fertility. I can't imagine what it would be like without a dedicated full-time parent.
> I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.
Not to sound snide, but I also don't think it's as straightforward as linking two correlative effects. High grades in school is also often predictive of economic background, race, gender etc... that themselves are correlated to birth rates. I don't see here much reason to believe that providing early childhood care would decrease birth rates.
Before this new law, in France kindergarden already existed and 98% of children were already attending kindergarten. (It has always been free as well) I don't think this has been done to tackle the low fertility problem in France, but more to enforce a standardization of the education of young children.
>Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
As a new parent of a 14 month year old boy - kindergartens have very low impact on our decision to have more children. We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) - he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel. Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
The thing that would actually impact our decision to have more children (early-mid 30s) :
- fully paid maternity leave - right now it's 100% for first 6 months and after that it's capped at national average - which is >70% pay cut for both of us
- despite both of us earning significantly above average - there's 0 decent opportunities to buy a family home right now - everything that's worth something is long gone off the market, and if something comes up people with cash to buy upfront show up faster than you can dial the ad
The rest is outside of governments control, biggest thing being wife has to give up career for a non-trivial ammount of time (even if I took out some maternity leave realistically she has to take at least 6 months off).
I suspect that retirement age plays a non-trivial part in this as well - having retired parents to fall back on as support when having multiple children while having active careers is very valuable.
>We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) -
So you agree that having someone extra to watch over your kids is something that's needed? For most people, that is kindergarten.
>he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel.
Almost every kid does this. I have, so have all other kids. It's really not that bad, your kid needs to learn to socialize eventually. It's a bit insulting to call it 'cruel' to bring your kid to kindergarten.
>Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
Yes, that's how the human immune system is supposed to work.
>Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten). Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens.
I'm guessing what they mean is that it removes some of the financial barriers to parents during early childhood: they can return to work because their child is in school/daycare for most of the day, at limited to no cost to them.
Because now government know exactly how many kids it has to fund daycare for and where the facilities should be.
I’d even go as far as parental leave should be completely covered until there is government provided daycare, so as the decision to have kids doesn’t carry too much of an economic burden.
compulsory education is hardly an incentive to child bearing. if anything those who have kids wish to decide what is best for kids without state compulsions
A lot of places have bizarre over-parenting practices that add social pressures on anyone who has children. I would have been much more inclined to have children in a place that either doesn't freak out about free range children like when I grew up or has a set public system over one that makes you feel guilty for not being bio enough, not choosing the right
private schools, not getting private tutors, etc, etc.
It is interesting to watch parents burn out and get divorced so their children can have a better life than the one social pressures dictate.
What is funny to me is that some people who are all about the free market fail to recognize incentives when it comes to children. Sure, there are non-monetary considerations (big ones!) but the economic costs of having children (both out of pocket and opportunity) are continuing to rise.
If you want more of something, subsidize it, either explicitly or by reducing its relative costs. Here's an off the cuff list of suggestions which would reduce the cost of children:
* Accessible free or low cost daycare/childcare
* Accessible low cost health care
* Cheaper housing near job centers
I'm sure there are more.
But how are we going to pay for all that? Consider it an investment allowing a country to continue to have a growing tax base.
Whatever verbal logic is given to justify compulsory earlier access it will be just talk until it's actually proven that it has the effect of increasing the birthrate.
It may have the opposite effect and then we'll come up with a different verbal logic to justify why it decreased the birth rate.
Verbal logic was given to justify the war against poverty in the sixties and sixty years and trillions of dollars later USA has a higher poverty rate than then. I'm not saying it was a bad idea, just that forecasters were wrong en masse.
So this may work or not, but honestly nobody knows, and those giving verbal logic for why it will succeed are purely speculating.
I don't have children but find it interesting that one way you propose that government can make it easier for families to have children is to create services that involve the children spending even less of their childhood with their family.
I agree education of a child is very important. Not necessarily public education, although that can be quite good in some respects.
But if a government wants to make it easier to have children wouldn't it make more sense to come up with policies that allow a couple to afford to raise children on a single income? That way, one parent is always able to spend time with the children when needed.
Having kids for the economy and what else is selfish. Kids should not be brought to fix things screwed up by their parents and grandparents. These kids are used like the fuel cells like in The Matrix, not because there is some benefit to them, there is none btw.
Life itself is pretty hard for most people, most just don't accept truth and make up a reason to cope. Copium. It's heartbreaking seeing children fleeing their home, losing everyone they know like in Syrian and now Ukraine just in last decade.
Then there is climate change, which will be devastating in near future. Even IPCC report is manipulated by lobbying.
Reading the article through and through, it seems that it is a given that the world's currently huge population should not be allowed to shrink, for the good of the economy.
This is an .. amazingly shortsighted take, especially when taking into consideration the resource (over-)utilization and flat-out exploitative extraction which was required just to get us this far. 1/13 of all people that have ever lived are alive right now. Maybe--just maybe--it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink over the coming decades, and quite possibly we need to disconnect our economies from unbounded growth while we're at it.
This was also my main problem with the article (I submitted it!). However this does raise the issue that we haven't found the economic model which allows population to age/decline while maintaining living standards. I guess the answer is going to be "robots".
Honestly, the model where families stayed together longer and aging parents lived with their kids as they got older is probably the closest thing to sustainable out there.
The alternative is going to be a huge amount of caretaking career opportunities.
It’s also weird that the article starts with something caused by this trend which is either generally, or universally, considered good - fewer wars - and then, without comment or explanation (other than a throwaway line about the sound of children), postulates the trend is bad. The example he opens the article with (!) implies there’s some upside.
EDIT: I can name two - less war and a damper on climate change, especially if pausing to figure out solutions with a lower global population will lead to a larger, permanent, global “carrying capacity” later.
It really is the case that some people cannot be happy while there are too many other people -- they need to live on enormous properties and drive huge gas-guzzling trucks at high speeds without ever meeting any traffic or parking contention. The presence of neighbors genuinely diminishes their well-being. From both a geometry and energy perspective, not too many people can have this life.
But it's also the case that a lot of people are happy living in Manhattan and taking the subway. Billions more people could have this life if we allowed it.
I think people whose preferences are incompatible with the vast majority of their fellow humans being alive, need to take one for the team here.
No, it's the opposite. Happyness comes from wealth, more or less. Economists are pretty much in agreement on that and their case is strong. Wealth in turn is basically "population * technology", where "technology" is broadly defined and also depends somewhat on population.
If population goes down wealth goes down, life gets harder, people get less happy. Pretty simple. Consider that in a low population world it's probably not worth being a computer programmer, because the demand for your physical labor would be higher.
I think there may be a different way to think about it:
- the larger a society / civilization. The more specialty it can support
- reducing the size of a civilization can result in a reduction of specialty.
- this can result in a reduction of capacity and effectively inflation and a reduction in technology
There are definitely other factors as well, but GDP is almost directly correlated to population. A reduction in population is effective a civilizational contraction.
If we start seeing a general reduction in population above a certain threshold (idk what that is), you may even see cascading failures. Entire technology sectors are abandoned, etc. which could result in civilization collapse.
Arguably, this is similar to what happened in the Bronze Age when the interconnected trade networks failed. Similarly, during the dark ages.
It's not the number of people, it's how they live. Big houses, big cars, commute.
> it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink
Not if it happens too fast. It may very well be unstoppable. In countries like South Korea every couple has one child these days. So its population is going 1/2. If they want to correct that and return to previous level, every couple formed among those children would have to bear 4 children.
Malthusian economics is an intuitive and once-popular idea, that is pretty well discredited by the the world getting a lot more pleasant to live in since Industrial Revolution England. Do people really still believe it?
They do in certain parts of academia. The message that academic models fail to predict reality isn't a popular one, hence the failure to haven anything from the 70s Malthusians "limits to growth" models.
Yeah there are enough humans. We will reach an equilibrium point. Right now that looks to be between 8 and 10 billion and that's a hell of a lot of people on a increasling resource limited planet.
This is why I'm flabbergasted by people who oppose immigration to the United States. We are lucky to be a country that young people want to move to. Additionally, I've road tripped 100k miles all over North America. One surprising thing was just how empty the place is, especially the Western US of course, but also places like Western Pennsylvania. Outside the major cities, the US is sparsely populated. I know it doesn't feel that way to people living in major metro areas or at least it didn't to me until I drove around and had a look.
> This is why I'm flabbergasted by people who oppose immigration to the United States.
They're opposed because to them, the United States is the people living there, not the landmass. From that point of view, adding a different people to the land worsens the crisis, not ameliorates it.
If, indeed, it is a crisis at all - nearly every country is currently at its most populous in history by far, and ecosystems are at their limits. We're nowhere near worrying about extinction from underpopulation - quite the opposite.
Depopulation of the country-side is an issue in Spain too. But immigrants don't move there. They go to urban areas, especially when their presence is illegal. Spain tried to get immigrants from South America move into to the villages by giving them a residential permit (and even a farm, I believe), but it was not successful, AFAIK.
Racism isn't new in America or anywhere else in the world.
The difference between America and the rest of the world is that America has more immigrants relative to its population and in absolute terms than any other country.
Out of curiosity, can you name a non Western country less racist than America?
I'm not surprised by racism. I'm surprised at the anti-immigration sentiment as public policy. I understand that racists vote in racist representatives, but at some point the representatives will have to make the case for more immigration to keep America young and vibrant.
Are you sure these people are out there besides a tiny minority? Can you name a member of Congress or Senate that opposes all immigration to the US?
Opposing immigration hardly has any support in the US, what has support is opposing certain kinds of immigration. From their point of view some immigrants can be a net negative to the country, regardless of how many children they bring with them or have, and prefer immigration to be restricted for them.
So I don't think you need to be flabbergasted because a tiny minority opposes immigration. For any idea there's a tiny minority that will believe in it.
I think you may find far fewer people than you expect to be fully anti-immigrant. I'm 100% pro immigration, and 100% anti illegal-immigration, and that has caused me to be branded as "anti-immigrant" a number of times(only online, where nuance doesn't exist)
I think part of the reason might be that "illegal immigration", in the US at least, is a legal fiction that hasn't even existed for a century. The rules are entirely arbitrary and are designed to keep the legacy majority in power. They convince people that this is the right thing to do through fear-mongering and lies, telling people that immigrants take their jobs, reduce wages, have incompatible values, destroy "our" culture, etc.
I've been doing genealogy research lately, and when my great-grandparents immigrated to the US (around 1910), the only requirement for "legal" immigration was that they entered the country at a designated port of entry and were identified and documented on entry. Around 10 years later they were US citizens (and that length of time was more due to them not feeling they needed it, than due to any bureaucratic nonsense).
I expect that if we were to re-adopt a similar system today, it would not be catastrophic in the ways the government (both the left and right) would like us to believe. So I think you are branded anti-immigrant at times because being "anti illegal-immigration" is just kinda missing the point, and shows a lack of compassion and empathy for people who immigrate in ways that don't tick the arbitrary boxes.
In threads like this, everyone who is against illegal immigration is assumed to also be against legal immigration. This has no factual basis and demonstrates this isn’t a conversation, it’s political posturing.
The government still owns around 50% all land in the west, so it is harder to get that land to live on. The east coast is largely built up to the mississippi because historically people needed the rivers to move cargo. Over land was really expensive and dangerous. Here's a neat map of all the federally managed lands, it supports that the west is largely empty: https://gisgeography.com/federal-lands-united-states-map/
Because we are a tribal people and don't want to be invaded by foreigners. Additionally, adding to the labor supply and suppressing wages does not help families afford to have more children. A nation should boost its domestic birth rate, and if there's a cultural problem that pushes towards declining birth rates, they should address that. Bringing in new people is not a solution it is just another problem.
You realize that most of those areas don't have enough water to support large populations don't you? And it's getting worse as the west is currently experiencing a drought that could last a century or more given historical precedence and the added complications of climate change.
This a million times. But, the reason is clear: my demographic is terrified of being a minority. The fear of this is being stoked by Fox News and other similar media outlets. Especially in the US, the fear of reprisals from past bad deeds (slavery and Jim Crow laws) are the immediate reasons.
I don't see why - in other countries throughout the world, minorities live in harmony with majorities, especially when they're ethnically very distinct, so that they are still visibly a different group even after culturally assimilating.
It is only the US where this is a source of conflict.
Desire for immigration doesn't imply that you want completely uncontrolled immigration.
Maybe you want to bring in mostly educated non-criminals? Or mostly people who generally agree with the governing philosophy and our notion of freedom, so that it might not be voted away?
Don't worry about those people. The US still allows a larger total number of immigrants per year than any other nation in the world. Over a million people a year - basically the same as all of western Europe combined:
"In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country, with 47 million immigrants as of 2015. This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the United States population. ...
According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016. Of these, 48% were the immediate relatives of United States citizens, 20% were family-sponsored, 13% were refugees or asylum seekers, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4.2% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program..." [1]
That's roughly 3,200 new Americans every day, 365 days a year. 1/5 of the world's migrants come to one country: The USA. I personally think this is something to be proud of. We are still a nation of immigrants and though the Trump administration did try to curtail immigration, the system is still functioning and relatively robust.
Now, what to do about top international talent avoiding the country because of radical right wing politics that demonize immigrants and conservative lawmakers that consistently try to prevent people coming? I think that's a solution with an obvious answer.
Did those numbers decline meaningfully during the Trump presidency? His constituency and platform is very anti-immigrant.
Regardless of that, how many immigrants in the US feel secure in their status? I know a lot of people on H-1B visas who have been in the green card line for over a decade, and live with the constant stress of losing their job and having to leave the country nearly immediately. I also know some who are asylum seekers, and stats aren't awesome there, either; I think something like 40% of them are ultimately rejected, some after years of being in limbo. Even family-sponsored immigration can take years to work its way through the system.
So sure, we have a lot of immigrants here, but I do wonder how many of them actually feel welcome, and secure in their progress toward permanent residency or citizenship, if that's what they desire. And meanwhile, all these immigrants -- even those who have waited years and been granted green cards -- can't vote and meaningfully participate in how they are governed.
My gut feeling is that there's a strong correlation between rent prices and fertility rates. You can't have kids if you can't work out where to put them.
That said, I'm generally quite relaxed about the population trend: the 18th and 19th century had ballooning populations in Europe, and collapsing populations everywhere else. I don't think it's going to get to the point where there are serious overpopulation problems in the global south - at least, nowhere near what we already have in Europe.
This article actually addresses this, and is one component of the larger problem:
"Older people tend to vote for their own self-interests, and in the case of Britain, end up controlling the government in power; voters with pensions and homes opt for lower growth and restricted housebuilding, further raising the cost of home ownership for the young and so pushing down the fertility rate still further. If we’re playing a generational blame game for the lack of children…"
> strong correlation between rent prices and fertility rates.
I assume you mean a positive correlation.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the former Eastern Block countries experienced both, a reduction in fertility and too much housing. The latter because so many left for the west. So many buildings were empty that quite a bit of housing stock was removed, see e.g. [1].
The opposite is also true: you’re competing for housing with childless people, who can afford higher rents. Less kids=more disposable income=higher tolerance for rent increases
I agree with your gut feeling, and I disagree quite strongly with most of the sentiment found in the comments of this article, stating that the lack of children stems from selfishness or responsibility towards the planet.
High rents and other features of contemporary society make it difficult and expensive to have children. These things also make it difficult to get enough time for children, with the amount of income-generating work that's required. Then, most of the care is offloaded to professional caretakers, as this gives a significant improvement to the budgets of time and money.
My suspicion is that many who state that they skip kids due to the environment or personal reasons, actually just need a fig leaf to cover the fact that they're financially unable to support kids while maintaining a lifestyle that makes children net positive for their own quality of life. For most, this would be a pretty painful admission to make, but there's plenty of observations indicating it's true for many.
In contrast to most people here, I believe that this is actually a pretty big problem. It's not as bad as having a birthrate of 4 and sprinting into a demographic catastrophe, but economic growth in the sense of making all aspects of life better and cheaper is critical if we want to make civilization sustainable. Balanced demographics and kids raised with love, care, plenty and care from capable parents are a very important part of that. This is one of the things I actually believe the conservatives get right.
> This is one of the things I actually believe the conservatives get right.
If you go back into the early history of conservatism, there was a breed of conservative that wanted to protect traditional social relations against the social dislocation of early capitalism.
The problem is, the people doing the social dislocation, the people doing the enclosures and clearances, were also those who benefited the most from the traditional social relations, aristocrats, etc. So the idea developed in two divergent directions: the first, the conservatives, who tried to protect traditional society by moral education, enforcement, entreaty, etc, the second, the early socialists, who tried to protect traditional society by protecting traditional social relations (usually land rights) through politics.
As you can imagine, this cuts in opposite directions: the first group would want to protect, for instance, traditional aristocratic privilege, while the second might want to abrogate it, in order to prevent an aristocrat from taking their land. Both sides would be seeing themselves as 'conserving' the status quo.
This was all about three hundred years ago in the UK, or much less in Spain, or Mexico, or Russia. The current dominance of 'conservative liberals' in all nations shows that the first direction, where you protect the veneer of tradition while allowing unfettered capitalism to trash its innards, won out. The last socialist revolutionaries of the old sort were people like Zapata, protecting their societies against the encroaching Haciendas. Today, there is nothing left to protect, so that's why modern socialists don't have much truck with whatever shreds of traditional culture remain.
Developed societies seem to be shifting into a more "selfish" paradigm, where the question of the day is "what can this situation really do for me?". Day to day actions are framed in these terms, and the result is that raising children becomes a harder and harder question to justify in this paradigm. Even in this thread, having kids is seen through this odd eugenics-style paradigm of - well, I have to counteract the balance of idiocracy style effects and have a responsibility to carry on my family's genetic material.
Children are expensive. Children take away a lot of your otherwise "free" time (although spending time with them can hardly be considered an objective "waste"). Grandparents don't want to put in the time either, they want to go on cruises and fully "enjoy" their life (along the paradigm of "what can this really do for me?").
Ultimately we end up with parents who want to offload their kids, stuffing them into (expensive) daycares earlier and earlier (despite what research says are negative effects of such early child separation). We have lost the traditional support system of older generations being around, living with new parents, and helping in a meaningful and impactful way with child raising. We have prioritized large inefficient housing, mostly as an investment vehicle, and have discounted the less economically-linked investment and rewards that come from raising children.
In any case, this is a perfect storm for dropping fertility rates, and it seems at this point these factors are so ingrained in developed economies that it can be considered a natural consequence of a population who has pivoted towards wealth building and economic priority.
Despite this shift towards selfish economic efficiency, is anyone really happier? Really really tough to say.
I can say that despite the cost, the career impact it had, and the completely changed dynamic of how I spend my time - raising kids has been the highlight of my life. I've never really been one for considering pure economic and personal efficiency though, and I've noticed I'm more and more of an outlier among my social circle.
> Developed societies seem to be shifting into a more "selfish" paradigm, where the question of the day is "what can this situation really do for me?"
I think that's not well supported as the source of the problem, even to the extent it may arguably be true: developed societies tend to have adopted strong social support mechanism, so that having lots of kids so that you have a chance that someone will be willing to support you in your old age is no longer necessary. That's also why some very rich countries are seeing less of the dropoff in natural population growth for their level of development; they also happen to be the ones with weaker social support systems.
When it comes to having children, there's plenty of selfishness on both sides of the decision.
I agree that people who remain childless often do so for some of the selfish reasons you describe, but let's not pretend that having a child is a selfless act. Many people have children because they believe doing so will give their lives meaning, because they want to carry on their family name/line, because they are afraid there will be no one to take care of them when they get old. They do so because they feel pressured by their family and friends to "join the club". They feel pressured by their parents to give them grandchildren. And hell, some people have kids by accident, due to a lack of family planning or education.
How many people decide to have a child because they want to enrich their communities, to help with future demographics and the future economy?
He's not saying it's selfish to not have children, he's saying the decision making process relies on determining the usefulness of a given activity, and kids rarely score high there. In the past it worked differently, I suppose at least partly these things were done because of tradition or because of religious encouragement. In the past they weren't doing it in some way that was significantly less selfish than us, but whatever reason they did it for the system would continue unlike it is today
Though, I remember having a conversation with some classmates in college, and the only one that said they enjoyed their childhood was the one who had been "outsourced". The rest of us just remembered being mostly bored.
> Grandparents don't want to put in the time either
Is that really the case?
The grandparents I know are all super eager to get grandchild time and go pretty far out of their way to make that easy for the parents. In the US and Europe anyway, I don’t know that many people elsewhere but I would assume it’s the same.
Especially in the US, geography can make it difficult but I don’t see that as a
lack of motivation.
Maybe my sample is skewed but it’s definitely not all wealthy/educated/tech people.
Having kids is the "selfish" thing to do, especially in this thread. The economy and country will suffer, so bringing more sentient without their consent. These kids already have jobs ready for them, to fix things that their ancestors screwed up and now have a much bigger older population.
The rich and famous celebrities are asking to have more kids because they will need these cells to run their factory and sell product services. Economy needs to grow every year only for them.
Climate crisis also going to be extremely cruel to all species and these kids have to suffer the consequences of all the previous humans. Bringing them here is way too selfish. Even IPCC report was watered down.
While I found things to like in the article, the comparison to ‘Children of Men’ is very strained. In the book women couldn’t get pregnant for unspecified reasons, but they desperately wanted to. The world the article refers to is one in which people choose not to have children generally for economic reasons.
I'm not sure the two motivations are that different in effect. If you can't have kids for medical reasons vs you can't because it's ruinously expensive what really is the difference?
Crudely speaking, birth rates in poor countries are higher than in rich countries. An within countries, birth rates amongst the poor tend to be higher than the rich.
The book is tragic in a different way - it’s our inevitable extinction being portrayed.
In real life we may see some of the nasty sociopolitical consequences of that, but they aren’t irreversible. We can repopulate the depopulated regions, we can restart farming there (now with more automation and better quality of life). We don’t necessarily share the fate of the humanity of the book.
It’s not that expensive. To be honest having kids make you make a lot of fiscally responsible decisions. It separates the wheat from the chaff.
That said as soon as my kids are 18 I’m getting a really expensive sports car, but maybe a used one because years of parenting have ruined my ability to wastefully spend money.
The West has already made its choice. We have chosen to do nothing about declining birth rates among the native population and have instead chosen to supplement the population with immigration from developing nations, or whatever term you wish to use for those countries where birth rates are still high. The numbers are plain to see. Where once an extended family was the norm (it takes a village…) now families are atomised. 2 parent or increasingly 1 parent families. Even when an extended family exists (grandparents are still alive, everyone is still married and on friendly terms) it is common for people to move to where the work is. This may be many minutes or hours away from the new offspring.
“…it is common for people to move to where the work is.”
This really resonates. In my 30-40’s peer group, zero of them live in or near their home city/town. Some grandparents have been financially successful enough that they bought a second home to be near their grandchildren, but the “new norm” seems to be both parents work full time to make ends meet without any other parenting support.
There really isn't much of a choice, and even then it's not a long term solution. From the article:
"Morland talks of the trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy. Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."
> We have chosen to do nothing about declining birth rates among the native population and have instead chosen to supplement the population with immigration from developing nations, or whatever term you wish to use for those countries where birth rates are still high.
It's a temporary solution at best because birth rates are falling worldwide and doing so much faster than expected. [1]
> Even when an extended family exists (grandparents are still alive, everyone is still married and on friendly terms) it is common for people to move to where the work is.
Do you mean to imply that people are forced to move to where the work is or that they choose to move there? Because that makes a big difference.
Do you think immigration has disadvantages? Could you name them?
For some people the disadvantages outweigh the advantages (like offering a solution to birth rates, provided low birth rates are a problem). Immigrants and their descendants can and have swung election results. Nothing wrong with this but for some people this is too big of a disadvantage.
This shouldn't surprise you, there are many countries with very little immigration, very strict immigration laws, and low birth rates, so for them the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and they are not even democracies.
In homogenous societies like japan, Sweden, and Denmark it usually leads to a lot of ethnic contradictions once the immigrant population passes a certain threshold.
Once has to wonder whether it’s healthy when more than 50% of your population feels alienated by the country and often has more loyalty and love for the homeland he or she fled.
The immigration system of most European countries is also very broken. More than 60% of immigrants to France don’t even have a high school education and gun crime in Sweden is now among the highest in Europe (despite being the lowest in the 90s) due to Somali gangs.
People are tribal and not every country was birthed as a “melting pot” like the US or Canada. These days the words integration and assimilation are considered racist when talking about immigrants so societies in these countries will simply further polarize.
As a corollary to this: it's perhaps not surprising that the remaining conflict we do see is spearheaded by our increasingly aged heads of state, men and women who grew up in the shadow of WW2 and the peak of the Cold War.
Yet in the article he says “ The upside is that — and this is admittedly a strange time to suggest it — the world is going to be a lot less violent”.
Saddam Hussein was hardly a teenager when he invaded Kuwait, and Putin is no spring chicken. I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect this guy doesn’t either.
It’s a shame though, since the collapse of the Soviet Union the share of the worlds population dying in warfare has collapsed. It was already on a strong downward trend after the end of WW2. Let’s hope Ukraine is an outlier.
I think woodruffw meant that the conflict in the Old World might be spearheaded by those people who still have a romantic infatuation by war, which has been steadily declining since like WW1 but manages to hold on in some capacity to these days. Eventually we'll get to the point where people – contemporary young people, future born people – would not see physical violence as a means of settling political disagreements. Partly because they would know how precious life is in a low-fertility environment.
Kim Jong Un is not old (nor his sister). Putin was only 8 during the Cuban Missile Crisis so he only sees a caricature.
I'm not sure a younger generation growing up without fear of nuclear war is a safer thing. I suspect that most of the current heads of state being old and belligerant is correlation rather than causation.
Don't worry, there will be inexpensive automated drones to do the killing soon enough.
Kim Jong Un is a funny case. There's a reason we call North Korea the "hermit kingdom."
Putin was a child during the missile crisis, but he cut his teeth in the KGB of the 70s and 80s. His mentors and leaders were, in all likelihood, veterans of the Great Patriotic War.
(To be clear: I don't think that the risk of war ends with the deaths of these particular generations of leaders. But I do think we're seeing a particularly outmoded approach to war at the moment.)
Readit News
Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
I'm a parent of two young children, a 3 years old and a 6 months old. This is the hardest period of my life since high school. I'm 34 and in our circles I'm the youngest dad. Most of other dads' are in their late 30s all the way to early 50s.
Yet I do feel I'm making a difference, especially considering that I'm Italian (high longevity + few children). I've been also inspired by my choices of parenthood by the movie IDIOCRACY:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk I was delighted when I red in the Elon Musk biography that he had also saw the movie and that was also one of the reasons for being a parent of multiple kids.
More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation. Now you advocate for them to have more control and say over education by recommending more of their services? Nah, way more efficient, empowering, and aligned with freedom & democracy if parents in a household just get direct cash every month rather than government-run facilities. No thanks. Way too many problems with more gov. Give cash instead, solve the problem. And foster good working environment so wages go up and people can choose to work less and still have a family.
Not rocket science
That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
How does replacing one form of authoritarianism with another, perhaps preferable to some, form of authoritarianism make things better?
> More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
As opposed to shitty private sector programs run by profiteers?
> We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation.
What does this have to do with anything?
Also you complain about inflation but also want more direct cash infusions?
If you want people generally to work less and earn more, how are you going to reduce the amount of work there is for them to do? Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford (inflation? What dat?) if less work is being done to provide them? Sounds fascinating.
Or increase taxes on capital and redistribute the gains, rather than relying on wages.
Preschool in my district is 4 days a week, 2.5hrs / day.
That's a JOKE. Meant only for people who don't work.
But they also got another levy on taxes for "technology" and "new buildings".
They don't need more money, they just need to better spend the money they have.
Private daycare costs around $2000/month. That's more than tuition on the university ($1000/month or so).
So I just wish that once kids are in preschool age the preschool offered something reasonable
Also, have i mentioned that public preschool is not free? On top of taxes, we pay $400/month or so for 4 days a week, 2.5hrs/day preschool. It's nuts.
Oh, and they insert a random "teacher development days" where preschool is closed. Can't they do development in summer, when the school is closed anyway?
Being a parent sux.
I don’t even see that much early retirement, instead of getting our mountains of things.
Or is this advice only for the proletariat, who for some reason will behave differently?
Ok. How?
Getting "direct cash" that a young family could use for daycare doesn't make any difference if there's nowhere for them to spend it.
There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal. They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
Some people are took that as directed at Muslim community — https://m.timesofindia.com/world/europe/france-passes-anti-r...
Also giving you children to the state to be taught is somewhat disturbing.
EDIT: By deferring to others to teach your children, they won’t learn your culture, traditions and will (statistically) be worse off than if you teach them yourself.
My wife and I settled on making less money (still more than enough), but raising our kids ourselves. It’s hard, but easily the most rewarding thing. Plus our kids are WAY ahead in most areas. Imagine, your children are learning from other children all day at school... is that better than learning from adults all day? No.
When they get older we will probably consider a “pod” or one teacher for 6-8 kids with a family we know. You can pay the teacher far more and the parents can be more involved (we can effectively dictate the curriculum). I’m also planning on having my kids help me with work by 8-10. They can learn to participate and be productive far earlier.
I believe this isn't correct. Homeschooling is legal in France, although restricted. You need to be able to prove your kids are receiving a proper education.
https://www.parentconcept.com/french-home-education-law
> They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
I also think this is incorrect. Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.
This has not been determined. Homeschooling is correlated with better outcomes, but I'm quite certain causality has not been established here.
I completely agree that families should get more support. I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.
Not to sound snide, but I also don't think it's as straightforward as linking two correlative effects. High grades in school is also often predictive of economic background, race, gender etc... that themselves are correlated to birth rates. I don't see here much reason to believe that providing early childhood care would decrease birth rates.
As a new parent of a 14 month year old boy - kindergartens have very low impact on our decision to have more children. We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) - he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel. Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
The thing that would actually impact our decision to have more children (early-mid 30s) :
- fully paid maternity leave - right now it's 100% for first 6 months and after that it's capped at national average - which is >70% pay cut for both of us
- despite both of us earning significantly above average - there's 0 decent opportunities to buy a family home right now - everything that's worth something is long gone off the market, and if something comes up people with cash to buy upfront show up faster than you can dial the ad
The rest is outside of governments control, biggest thing being wife has to give up career for a non-trivial ammount of time (even if I took out some maternity leave realistically she has to take at least 6 months off).
I suspect that retirement age plays a non-trivial part in this as well - having retired parents to fall back on as support when having multiple children while having active careers is very valuable.
So you agree that having someone extra to watch over your kids is something that's needed? For most people, that is kindergarten.
>he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel.
Almost every kid does this. I have, so have all other kids. It's really not that bad, your kid needs to learn to socialize eventually. It's a bit insulting to call it 'cruel' to bring your kid to kindergarten.
>Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
Yes, that's how the human immune system is supposed to work.
If you decide to have children, care for them.
I hate this "the society as a whole has to care for the children" attitude and putting them in someone else's care as soon as possible.
Note that I do not hate children, nor parents and I don't mind spending money on education and care for children.
I just think the solution should be to work less and be able to live a meaningful life.
Later in life, children should care for their elderly parents.
This system is far superior to the "go die in a house full of old people" approach.
Mind again: I am not talking about taking care of someone with special needs like Alzheimer's etc.
How is compulsory use easier access?
If the government mandates kindergarten attendance, well, now it's much more important to put funding for kindergartens in your next bill.
If every parent of a three-year-old has to think about finding a kindergarten, that's a lot more political clout behind getting better kindergartens.
And so on and so forth.
I’d even go as far as parental leave should be completely covered until there is government provided daycare, so as the decision to have kids doesn’t carry too much of an economic burden.
It is interesting to watch parents burn out and get divorced so their children can have a better life than the one social pressures dictate.
If you want more of something, subsidize it, either explicitly or by reducing its relative costs. Here's an off the cuff list of suggestions which would reduce the cost of children:
* Accessible free or low cost daycare/childcare
* Accessible low cost health care
* Cheaper housing near job centers
I'm sure there are more.
But how are we going to pay for all that? Consider it an investment allowing a country to continue to have a growing tax base.
It may have the opposite effect and then we'll come up with a different verbal logic to justify why it decreased the birth rate.
Verbal logic was given to justify the war against poverty in the sixties and sixty years and trillions of dollars later USA has a higher poverty rate than then. I'm not saying it was a bad idea, just that forecasters were wrong en masse.
So this may work or not, but honestly nobody knows, and those giving verbal logic for why it will succeed are purely speculating.
I agree education of a child is very important. Not necessarily public education, although that can be quite good in some respects.
But if a government wants to make it easier to have children wouldn't it make more sense to come up with policies that allow a couple to afford to raise children on a single income? That way, one parent is always able to spend time with the children when needed.
Life itself is pretty hard for most people, most just don't accept truth and make up a reason to cope. Copium. It's heartbreaking seeing children fleeing their home, losing everyone they know like in Syrian and now Ukraine just in last decade.
Then there is climate change, which will be devastating in near future. Even IPCC report is manipulated by lobbying.
https://twitter.com/MrMatthewTodd/status/1490987272044703752
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
You turned my quote in "I'm having kids because of Idiocracy"
You are using Reductio Ad Absurdum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
He and the brave employees of Space X will guide life to the stars.
Deleted Comment
This is an .. amazingly shortsighted take, especially when taking into consideration the resource (over-)utilization and flat-out exploitative extraction which was required just to get us this far. 1/13 of all people that have ever lived are alive right now. Maybe--just maybe--it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink over the coming decades, and quite possibly we need to disconnect our economies from unbounded growth while we're at it.
The alternative is going to be a huge amount of caretaking career opportunities.
EDIT: I can name two - less war and a damper on climate change, especially if pausing to figure out solutions with a lower global population will lead to a larger, permanent, global “carrying capacity” later.
In order to keep everyone fed and happy, and sustainable, we need fewer everyones.
But it's also the case that a lot of people are happy living in Manhattan and taking the subway. Billions more people could have this life if we allowed it.
I think people whose preferences are incompatible with the vast majority of their fellow humans being alive, need to take one for the team here.
If population goes down wealth goes down, life gets harder, people get less happy. Pretty simple. Consider that in a low population world it's probably not worth being a computer programmer, because the demand for your physical labor would be higher.
- the larger a society / civilization. The more specialty it can support
- reducing the size of a civilization can result in a reduction of specialty.
- this can result in a reduction of capacity and effectively inflation and a reduction in technology
There are definitely other factors as well, but GDP is almost directly correlated to population. A reduction in population is effective a civilizational contraction.
If we start seeing a general reduction in population above a certain threshold (idk what that is), you may even see cascading failures. Entire technology sectors are abandoned, etc. which could result in civilization collapse.
Arguably, this is similar to what happened in the Bronze Age when the interconnected trade networks failed. Similarly, during the dark ages.
Quite possibly we are seeing one now.
They won't.
There's a whole world outside of USA.
They're opposed because to them, the United States is the people living there, not the landmass. From that point of view, adding a different people to the land worsens the crisis, not ameliorates it.
If, indeed, it is a crisis at all - nearly every country is currently at its most populous in history by far, and ecosystems are at their limits. We're nowhere near worrying about extinction from underpopulation - quite the opposite.
This is true due to resource intensity of consumption.
The difference between America and the rest of the world is that America has more immigrants relative to its population and in absolute terms than any other country.
Out of curiosity, can you name a non Western country less racist than America?
Opposing immigration hardly has any support in the US, what has support is opposing certain kinds of immigration. From their point of view some immigrants can be a net negative to the country, regardless of how many children they bring with them or have, and prefer immigration to be restricted for them.
So I don't think you need to be flabbergasted because a tiny minority opposes immigration. For any idea there's a tiny minority that will believe in it.
I've been doing genealogy research lately, and when my great-grandparents immigrated to the US (around 1910), the only requirement for "legal" immigration was that they entered the country at a designated port of entry and were identified and documented on entry. Around 10 years later they were US citizens (and that length of time was more due to them not feeling they needed it, than due to any bureaucratic nonsense).
I expect that if we were to re-adopt a similar system today, it would not be catastrophic in the ways the government (both the left and right) would like us to believe. So I think you are branded anti-immigrant at times because being "anti illegal-immigration" is just kinda missing the point, and shows a lack of compassion and empathy for people who immigrate in ways that don't tick the arbitrary boxes.
I don't see why - in other countries throughout the world, minorities live in harmony with majorities, especially when they're ethnically very distinct, so that they are still visibly a different group even after culturally assimilating.
It is only the US where this is a source of conflict.
Maybe you want to bring in mostly educated non-criminals? Or mostly people who generally agree with the governing philosophy and our notion of freedom, so that it might not be voted away?
"In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country, with 47 million immigrants as of 2015. This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the United States population. ...
According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016. Of these, 48% were the immediate relatives of United States citizens, 20% were family-sponsored, 13% were refugees or asylum seekers, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4.2% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program..." [1]
That's roughly 3,200 new Americans every day, 365 days a year. 1/5 of the world's migrants come to one country: The USA. I personally think this is something to be proud of. We are still a nation of immigrants and though the Trump administration did try to curtail immigration, the system is still functioning and relatively robust.
Now, what to do about top international talent avoiding the country because of radical right wing politics that demonize immigrants and conservative lawmakers that consistently try to prevent people coming? I think that's a solution with an obvious answer.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_St...
Did those numbers decline meaningfully during the Trump presidency? His constituency and platform is very anti-immigrant.
Regardless of that, how many immigrants in the US feel secure in their status? I know a lot of people on H-1B visas who have been in the green card line for over a decade, and live with the constant stress of losing their job and having to leave the country nearly immediately. I also know some who are asylum seekers, and stats aren't awesome there, either; I think something like 40% of them are ultimately rejected, some after years of being in limbo. Even family-sponsored immigration can take years to work its way through the system.
So sure, we have a lot of immigrants here, but I do wonder how many of them actually feel welcome, and secure in their progress toward permanent residency or citizenship, if that's what they desire. And meanwhile, all these immigrants -- even those who have waited years and been granted green cards -- can't vote and meaningfully participate in how they are governed.
That said, I'm generally quite relaxed about the population trend: the 18th and 19th century had ballooning populations in Europe, and collapsing populations everywhere else. I don't think it's going to get to the point where there are serious overpopulation problems in the global south - at least, nowhere near what we already have in Europe.
"Older people tend to vote for their own self-interests, and in the case of Britain, end up controlling the government in power; voters with pensions and homes opt for lower growth and restricted housebuilding, further raising the cost of home ownership for the young and so pushing down the fertility rate still further. If we’re playing a generational blame game for the lack of children…"
I assume you mean a positive correlation.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the former Eastern Block countries experienced both, a reduction in fertility and too much housing. The latter because so many left for the west. So many buildings were empty that quite a bit of housing stock was removed, see e.g. [1].
[1] https://www.eisenhuettenstadt.de/Leben-Wohnen/Wohnen-und-Bau...
High rents and other features of contemporary society make it difficult and expensive to have children. These things also make it difficult to get enough time for children, with the amount of income-generating work that's required. Then, most of the care is offloaded to professional caretakers, as this gives a significant improvement to the budgets of time and money.
My suspicion is that many who state that they skip kids due to the environment or personal reasons, actually just need a fig leaf to cover the fact that they're financially unable to support kids while maintaining a lifestyle that makes children net positive for their own quality of life. For most, this would be a pretty painful admission to make, but there's plenty of observations indicating it's true for many.
In contrast to most people here, I believe that this is actually a pretty big problem. It's not as bad as having a birthrate of 4 and sprinting into a demographic catastrophe, but economic growth in the sense of making all aspects of life better and cheaper is critical if we want to make civilization sustainable. Balanced demographics and kids raised with love, care, plenty and care from capable parents are a very important part of that. This is one of the things I actually believe the conservatives get right.
If you go back into the early history of conservatism, there was a breed of conservative that wanted to protect traditional social relations against the social dislocation of early capitalism.
The problem is, the people doing the social dislocation, the people doing the enclosures and clearances, were also those who benefited the most from the traditional social relations, aristocrats, etc. So the idea developed in two divergent directions: the first, the conservatives, who tried to protect traditional society by moral education, enforcement, entreaty, etc, the second, the early socialists, who tried to protect traditional society by protecting traditional social relations (usually land rights) through politics.
As you can imagine, this cuts in opposite directions: the first group would want to protect, for instance, traditional aristocratic privilege, while the second might want to abrogate it, in order to prevent an aristocrat from taking their land. Both sides would be seeing themselves as 'conserving' the status quo.
This was all about three hundred years ago in the UK, or much less in Spain, or Mexico, or Russia. The current dominance of 'conservative liberals' in all nations shows that the first direction, where you protect the veneer of tradition while allowing unfettered capitalism to trash its innards, won out. The last socialist revolutionaries of the old sort were people like Zapata, protecting their societies against the encroaching Haciendas. Today, there is nothing left to protect, so that's why modern socialists don't have much truck with whatever shreds of traditional culture remain.
Children are expensive. Children take away a lot of your otherwise "free" time (although spending time with them can hardly be considered an objective "waste"). Grandparents don't want to put in the time either, they want to go on cruises and fully "enjoy" their life (along the paradigm of "what can this really do for me?").
Ultimately we end up with parents who want to offload their kids, stuffing them into (expensive) daycares earlier and earlier (despite what research says are negative effects of such early child separation). We have lost the traditional support system of older generations being around, living with new parents, and helping in a meaningful and impactful way with child raising. We have prioritized large inefficient housing, mostly as an investment vehicle, and have discounted the less economically-linked investment and rewards that come from raising children.
In any case, this is a perfect storm for dropping fertility rates, and it seems at this point these factors are so ingrained in developed economies that it can be considered a natural consequence of a population who has pivoted towards wealth building and economic priority.
Despite this shift towards selfish economic efficiency, is anyone really happier? Really really tough to say.
I can say that despite the cost, the career impact it had, and the completely changed dynamic of how I spend my time - raising kids has been the highlight of my life. I've never really been one for considering pure economic and personal efficiency though, and I've noticed I'm more and more of an outlier among my social circle.
I think that's not well supported as the source of the problem, even to the extent it may arguably be true: developed societies tend to have adopted strong social support mechanism, so that having lots of kids so that you have a chance that someone will be willing to support you in your old age is no longer necessary. That's also why some very rich countries are seeing less of the dropoff in natural population growth for their level of development; they also happen to be the ones with weaker social support systems.
I agree that people who remain childless often do so for some of the selfish reasons you describe, but let's not pretend that having a child is a selfless act. Many people have children because they believe doing so will give their lives meaning, because they want to carry on their family name/line, because they are afraid there will be no one to take care of them when they get old. They do so because they feel pressured by their family and friends to "join the club". They feel pressured by their parents to give them grandchildren. And hell, some people have kids by accident, due to a lack of family planning or education.
How many people decide to have a child because they want to enrich their communities, to help with future demographics and the future economy?
Is that really the case?
The grandparents I know are all super eager to get grandchild time and go pretty far out of their way to make that easy for the parents. In the US and Europe anyway, I don’t know that many people elsewhere but I would assume it’s the same.
Especially in the US, geography can make it difficult but I don’t see that as a lack of motivation.
Maybe my sample is skewed but it’s definitely not all wealthy/educated/tech people.
The rich and famous celebrities are asking to have more kids because they will need these cells to run their factory and sell product services. Economy needs to grow every year only for them.
Climate crisis also going to be extremely cruel to all species and these kids have to suffer the consequences of all the previous humans. Bringing them here is way too selfish. Even IPCC report was watered down.
https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-r...
Additionally life is hard, cruel to many.
It's always others' needs. There might be many reasons to have kids but none of them is for the benefit of the potential kid.
I mean, beyond the suffering of being a parent to a 3 year old ;)
Crudely speaking, birth rates in poor countries are higher than in rich countries. An within countries, birth rates amongst the poor tend to be higher than the rich.
In real life we may see some of the nasty sociopolitical consequences of that, but they aren’t irreversible. We can repopulate the depopulated regions, we can restart farming there (now with more automation and better quality of life). We don’t necessarily share the fate of the humanity of the book.
That said as soon as my kids are 18 I’m getting a really expensive sports car, but maybe a used one because years of parenting have ruined my ability to wastefully spend money.
This really resonates. In my 30-40’s peer group, zero of them live in or near their home city/town. Some grandparents have been financially successful enough that they bought a second home to be near their grandchildren, but the “new norm” seems to be both parents work full time to make ends meet without any other parenting support.
"Morland talks of the trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy. Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."
It's a temporary solution at best because birth rates are falling worldwide and doing so much faster than expected. [1]
> Even when an extended family exists (grandparents are still alive, everyone is still married and on friendly terms) it is common for people to move to where the work is.
Do you mean to imply that people are forced to move to where the work is or that they choose to move there? Because that makes a big difference.
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet...
For some people the disadvantages outweigh the advantages (like offering a solution to birth rates, provided low birth rates are a problem). Immigrants and their descendants can and have swung election results. Nothing wrong with this but for some people this is too big of a disadvantage.
This shouldn't surprise you, there are many countries with very little immigration, very strict immigration laws, and low birth rates, so for them the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and they are not even democracies.
Once has to wonder whether it’s healthy when more than 50% of your population feels alienated by the country and often has more loyalty and love for the homeland he or she fled.
The immigration system of most European countries is also very broken. More than 60% of immigrants to France don’t even have a high school education and gun crime in Sweden is now among the highest in Europe (despite being the lowest in the 90s) due to Somali gangs.
People are tribal and not every country was birthed as a “melting pot” like the US or Canada. These days the words integration and assimilation are considered racist when talking about immigrants so societies in these countries will simply further polarize.
Saddam Hussein was hardly a teenager when he invaded Kuwait, and Putin is no spring chicken. I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect this guy doesn’t either.
It’s a shame though, since the collapse of the Soviet Union the share of the worlds population dying in warfare has collapsed. It was already on a strong downward trend after the end of WW2. Let’s hope Ukraine is an outlier.
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I'm not sure a younger generation growing up without fear of nuclear war is a safer thing. I suspect that most of the current heads of state being old and belligerant is correlation rather than causation.
Don't worry, there will be inexpensive automated drones to do the killing soon enough.
Putin was a child during the missile crisis, but he cut his teeth in the KGB of the 70s and 80s. His mentors and leaders were, in all likelihood, veterans of the Great Patriotic War.
(To be clear: I don't think that the risk of war ends with the deaths of these particular generations of leaders. But I do think we're seeing a particularly outmoded approach to war at the moment.)