The Reason People Aren't Having Kids

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/08/fertility-crisis/679319/

by sharjeelsayed • 3 months ago

2 7 3 months ago

Only got as far as the subhead due to a paywall but anyone notice how insistent these articles are that government subsidies are not the answer?

It seems there is strong agreement from the elites that sharing the country's wealth is not something they'll accept to solve this problem.

techblueberry• 3 months ago

Look I want government subsidized childcare and to tax wealth, but I don’t know that it would actually do much to move birth rates.

Poor people on average have more kids than rich people. It is likely more cultural than strictly speaking financial. No one’s all of a sudden having five kids because of government subsidized childcare.

tim-tday• 3 months ago

Is it because this place fucking sucks?

As a thought exercise try explaining the rules of life to a four year old: Oh because you’re a girl your total life one income will be 75% that of a boy. Doesn’t matter how much you work or how how good you are. Boys just get paid more. Now that we’re talking about income let’s consider taxes. When you’re just starting out you basically make nothing. That’s because. Well I don’t really know, but it’s not enough to pay rent and eat and drive. Yes you have to do all those things to live. No it’s not fair. Yes everyone knows. Yep still gotta pay taxes. Like a lot of taxes. No, rich people don’t pay a lot of taxes. (So try to be born rich, or at least not poor). Not even as much as poor people. This is called fuck you go be poor somewhere else. No you really don’t get anything for your taxes. They spend a lot of money blowing people up halfway around the world. I can’t really explain it. There are probably reasons, but I can’t really make a compelling case why that’s more important than spending the money helping sick people. We’re not allowed to do that here, not sure why. Some people hate the idea of helping sick people. Yeah don’t say that part at school. Someone might get mad. They won’t necessarily shoot you for it. Although that happens a lot. We say we can’t do anything but we haven’t really tried the obvious thing. No we’re not even allowed to talk about that thing. Something about the beginning of our country.

Speaking about the constitution and laws and stuff. There are two legal systems. Rich people can do anything they want, normal people have to follow the rules, poor people get screwed even if they follow the rules. There’s poison everywhere. Forever chemicals in food wrappers, ground water, pesticides. No, no, we know it causes organ failure and never goes away. Also that it accumulates in our bodies. Yep the evidence is clear. No uncertainty. Why? Oh I guess one or two companies get really rich doing it. And it works really well. And besides, it’s hardly the only poisonous thing we put in our water, air soil, bodies. Yeah people kinda suck I mean some people are ok. There are religions that tell people not to suck. Those people suck too, they just feel bad about it afterwards. sometimes. Actually usually not, they usually make up some excuse to not feel bad and then keep doing it. Most of the people who don’t suck are just normal people who go to work and try their best and try not to lie all the time or be a jerk. If you meet those people hang onto them. Those people are never the people in charge. Probably because getting to be in charge requires the other behaviors. There’s democracy to look forward to! I’d doesn’t work very well because it’s not illegal to just lie about stuff so people can just make up all kinds of untrue stuff and say it on tv. And lots of people believe it. Yeah even when it’s from people who we know lie all the time. No, not sure why that is. Do they not know that lying is wrong? Oh they do, everyone knows that.

The best defense is to be a selfish narcissist and just ignore all the problems. Those people have kids I hear. The billionaires are breeding. Not enough to support our civilization, but why do we assume our civilization is worth preserving anyway?

If we tallied it up, really, honestly tallied the score we probably do two shitty things for every good thing.

E-Reverance• 3 months ago

75%

Wouldn’t an absolute number make more sense to show than a percent. 75% is pretty good in some places in the world (not justifying the discrepancy though)

bell-cot• 3 months ago

In the mid-1900's, my parents raised 6 kids. Owned a decent home. And put the 6 of us through good colleges, debt-free.

All on dad's so-so white collar income, with close to zero "family" wealth on either side. Mom was a mother and housewife, but not a helicopter parent - it was normal and accepted to let us kids walk to & from school every day, and to roam the neighborhood (alone or with friends) during daylight hours.

There wasn't anything special about this - plenty of relatives, friends, and neighbors did similar.

Vs. these day - unless you were in the lucky 0.1%, could you even dream of doing that?

tnelsond4• 3 months ago

In Cambodia they used to have 6-10 kids each, then 3-5, and now every Cambodian just wants 2 children, 1 boy, 1 girl. The reasons? Mostly economic I guess. Even though school is free you have to have enough money to buy your kids junk food to eat while they're there.

On top of that most people are in debt at high interest rates because they built a fancy concrete house then ran away to Thailand to try to make money to pay off that debt. Their children are then in the care of the grandparents who oft times are very old.

It used to be that having a lot of kids was insurance that when you got old someone would be around to take care of you, but often I see these old people stressed and taking care of their grandchildren and worrying about their children's debt instead of being cared after.

KellyCriterion• 3 months ago

The reason is simple in my eyes:

Children cost a lot to raise in most countries, ending up with two parents working 100% + 75% while you have to put your offspring into (expensive) "external day care" (if you have no relatives near to you)

The capitalist system in this implementation is just "anti families & kids", so people make such decissions.

The Reason People Aren't Having Kids

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