Hello,
Well, the birth rate is highly decreasing around the world, and it concerns our politicians. Such as Macron talked about “Réarmement demographique” at the time (=demographic rearmament). Which makes me worried to talk about it that way.
In my POV, people don’t make children anymore because of a lots of reason : inflation, state of the world overall, fascism, wars, etc.
My question is : if you don’t want chilfren, do you still plan to have some just for the human race not go exctinct ? Because society tells you to even though you don’t want to ?
Comments
No. I didn’t care personally if human race instincts.
Some do, some don’t.
> if you don’t want chilfren, do you still plan to have some just for the human race not go exctinct ? Because society tells you to even though you don’t want to ?
Definitely no (because we are nowhere near the point of dying out and super hell no.
Society is not paying for diapers, society is not staying up for countless hours to care for a baby, society is not navigating the tricky process of raising a teen, society can shut its ass up and let me live my life
No amount of politicians misunderstanding this issue will make me change my mind about childlessness. If anything, this earth could use a decline in human populations.
I think there could be societal pressure, but my 3 kiddos are the greatest joy in my life and my wife’s.
Kids are challenging, they are expensive and can even get in the way of funner times, but there is no greater joy.
I don’t think many people have kids for tax incentives or because of societal pressure. I think people have kids because they decide for them in their individual situation it would add to their life.
>POV, people don’t make children anymore because of a lots of reason : inflation, state of the world overall, fascism, wars, etc.
This isn’t particularly defensible. For much of history conditions were much, much, worse. Do you ever worry about Vikings burning your town to the ground? Because that was the norm for like 500 years in Europe.
People have kids because of social pressures but not in the way you seem to propose, historically it was more socioeconomic pressures.
But in the end most people want a little slice of immortality.
I think people “oops” more often because of normative pressure.
Some people genuinely enjoy having kids. An even higher percentage genuinely enjoys making kids.
The economic pressure not to have kids (when we were all farmers kids paid for themselves starting at age 4) is immense, so the opposite is probably more true, OP.
Imaging chosing to not have kids because you don’t like the president lmao
because of sex
We had ours because my genetics needed to be passed down to offset those of the troglodytes
Most people make children because they’re drunk/high and the contraceptive didn’t work.
No. If I don’t want children,I wouldn’t care if the human race goes extinct.
No, I’d just rather have a loving family than being surrounded by filthy backstabbing rats.
The declining birth rate is a big deal that people don’t seem to understand. Elder generations need the support of younger generations. If that balance gets throw way off it will flip society on its head.
I cannot mentally or financally have one so that is that
The world will figure it out once I am gone and dead
As you said, the birth rate is decreasing around the world, so people obviously aren’t succumbing to societal pressure to have children.
People underestimate how powerful biological imperative is.
Consider that through the worst times to be alive, in times of suffering, war, oppression, and famine, we continue to have children. We don’t have as many and they don’t thrive as well but we still have them. There is no logic that can overrule that. Unless you physically separate the sexes you can’t stop humans from breeding.
In a healthy economy, in good times, with adequate safety nets people will have a lot of children. Family size will grow. Not everyone (I’m childfree and I’ve never had the urge) but the population will trend in that direction.
In rough times people might have fewer children and wait longer to have them if they can. The pressure is not on people to have children but to not have them due to circumstances that aren’t ideal. Again, this is speaking for the average person who has some kind of parental instinct. When the pressure not to have kids eases up, birth rates will rise. So you don’t have to convince people to breed, you simply have to optimize the conditions for it.
in traditional countries, like asia and middle east, yes
I always wanted a child and that’s what I did I had one. My child doesn’t ever want children. He said that the state of the world and how expensive everything is he doesn’t want to bring a child into the world. He is good with children and he would make a great dad, but it’s not what he wants. I don’t pressure him. It was very hard raising him in this economy… and things are just getting worse. I don’t understand why parents try to guilt trip their children into having children when it’s not the life they want. As far as there not being enough people to run the work force, they’re already replacing peoples jobs with machines.
Humans are definitly not in decliene. The eat
Rth could have less and would be better For it.
I thought you dudes were smart
i can speak for men , once you reach mid 30’s and don’t have kids, you feel incomplete. I think it’s hardcoded.
Having children in a first world country is a very expensive proposition well into early adulthood while having them in a mostly agrarian society is a benefit as soon as they can walk
Normal, well-adjusted people (not most Redditors) see the value in having offspring for many reasons beyond just perpetuating the species. For example: many old people have tough lives: you can’t go on beach vacations and go mountain biking at a certain point. Having kids and grandkids gives many people joy and the opportunity to spread joy at the moment they need it the most.
The same people who think that the Earth has too many people are too dense to realize that advanced economies that have a social security system are economically coupled to the ratio of workers to retirees. Generations of dwindling birth rates is an economic calamity that affects everything on Earth. Want the money for space travel, fighting Climate Change, or putting tampons in the boys locker room? Oops, you forgot to reproduce, so all of society’s extra money and then some is going to go to trying to take care of old people.
No. I want children and may still not have them. I definitely wouldn’t let society pressure me into having them if I didn’t want them.
Most people do, yes. A lot of people will think something must be wrong with you somehow if you’re 40+ and you’re not married and you don’t have kids. Which is fucking stupid of course.
Btw the real reason people don’t have as many kids nowadays compared to before is that having children takes too much time, energy and money. Kind of like a trap where you’ll be stuck in a loop for 20+ years. People would rather be flexible in their life, move to different places, meet new people regularly and “experience life”, have financial security and spend their time building a career. Especially women, who used to be viewed as only capable of being mothers. Nowadays, women can be anything they want, including not being a mother.
You can’t have this conversation without looking at how much birth control, family planning & sex ed has changed.
I’m only 45 right? When my grandparents were having kids the birth control pill hadn’t even been invented yet.
Demographics is destiny. Procreate or be replaced. It’s really that simple.
If we’re worried about the population going down, we can easily import people who are in areas of the world they’re desperate to flee from. If we as a planet actually valued children, then we wouldn’t have so many dying around the world of preventable causes. And if my society valued children, then we’d have universal health care, guaranteed paid parental leave, and policies that made it easier to have children.
ironically, the rich who can afford to and want to along w the poor who do not have access to resources and education will balance this in places where birth rates arent legally enforced. And whilst we have the old China’s limit of 1 per household history to learn from (no longer the case). We hopefully wont see a mandatory attempt at this distopian matching of fertile couples must achieve “x” children per household to compensate for falling rates in fertility plus society choosing not to. Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood was truly futuristic for its time (published in 85), and tragically, a possibility when looking at the state of the US republican mindhive
Societal pressure will make people have more kids, but not in the way politicians are going about it.
If two incomes could afford a small family home in people’s 20’s our birth rate would skyrocket but they don’t actually want or know how to fix people’s actual issues.
Politicians and billionares are concerned about the “replacement rate”, which under a system that is only interested in exponential growth, cannot afford to also, not grow exponentially. They are A.O.K. with the status quo, and will shame women who seek hystorectomies under the guise of “well, you might change your mind” whilst there are millions of children rotting in the system in need of a loving, caring home.
They pressure people to have more kids so they can exploit more people, we haven’t even had AI for 5 years and the talks about using them as slaves has been around for longer than that. It is for continuing exploitative practices, when most people who don’t want children, don’t want to have them for that reason.
I’m sure some people do, but I can’t imagine many people who strongly don’t want kids intentionally do so anyway because of societal pressure. I think it’s far more common that someone who doesn’t want to have kids gets pregnant/gets someone pregnant by accident and decides to keep it, or else they didn’t want kids at one point in their life, but their feelings evolve over time. Not that there is anything wrong with not having kids, but the biological urge to reproduce is stong. I used to date a girl who was adament she would never have kids when she was 18, and by 22 all she talked about is how bad she wanted one
A lot of children are made because the parents don’t exercise the good judgment to avoid making children.
People simply can’t financially afford to have kids like they did in the past. One of the side effects of such unbalanced wealth distribution is that no one really wants to have kids. Child care is more than a mortgage payment. Both adults have to work just to pay the actual mortgage payment. What are the choices if you don’t want to work until you’re dead.
For me, having children was an unquenchable desire since I was a kid. I suspect it was hormonal. I never had the opportunity, and now that I’m post-menopausal, I’m glad I didn’t sign up for that. I’m too unstable (PTSD). But I never really sat down and thought it out; it was just a desire.
Personally, I’ve wanted to be a dad since I was 8. I have a kid now, and she’s a great excuse to visit playgrounds or ride bikes.
I doubt anyone would do it for that specific reason, but society’s pressure takes many forms, I’m sure for many people having mom/dad/grandma meet the kids is one of the reasons, for example
Although we rationalize our decisions as if there’s a specific reason, we normally make decisions based on many reasons at the same time.
People would naturally decide to have children. Not all people but a lot more than currently do. If society would go back to Jobs, that offer you enough money to feed, house and clothe your children AND enough free time to actually witness them growing up.
Most people don’t have the time, energy and resources to have kids. So they chalk that up as “unrealistic dream”.
You have to have 3 children to increase population correct?.. we’re at 2 and we’re done
My theory is people will have children when excess resources allow for it. Prices are going up, available assets and resources are going down. Wealthy people are living longer, holding on to their assets and accumulating more, which forces prices up for everyone else and excludes assets from transference to the next generation. Without these assets, childbearing years are shortened and fewer children are born. In the west, where the wealthy have gotten really good at holding on to their wealth and building it, this also keeps it from circulation in the economy. As a result, the economy shrinks relative to population size. The smaller relative economy in an educated population naturally results in fewer children being born.
People have kids for all kinds of reasons. Some want someone to love on. Some have societal or religious pressure (I see you Mormons/LDS). Some do it because sex is fun and OOPS.
Personally, I can emphasize and sympathize with those who do and with those who don’t want to. We already have more people than we can feed. It’s not like there’s actually a shortage. The only people saying that are those worried they won’t have enough peasants to exploit as workers.
Both can be true, but not necessarily
We’re in a massive 8x population overshoot compared to the time before the 20th century began—the century of petroleum/gas enabling growth according to a hockey stick curve.
As that’s all in question now, with no clear answer how a post-petroleum era will allow the kinds of numbers it provided in terms of energy, packaging (plastic), fertilizer inputs, pesticides, harvesting, processing, long distance transport to market, etc.
Things go up slowly but tend to fail quite unpredictably and erratically. Regardless of what plans humankind has for family planning and all that, when the petro century’s very lifeblood isn’t there to sustain the unsustainable, the population will have to fall because there just won’t be the means to keep going. Probably like the plague, the chips will fall randomly. The threads of a society built up in such a complex global web are not givens.
A lot of genetic material is gonna be bug food.
There are 5 types of parents
In descending order of how prevalent I think they are in society.
1.) oops
2.) societal pressure deems it necessary to procreate
3.) they procreate due to their narcissism
4.) they procreate to plan for their shitty future
5.) they’re a weirdo and think it’s a good idea
I thought of this too. Some are doing this because they feel obligated, not because they want to
I can’t imagine people having children for altruistic motives. It’s funny how political leaders are now trying to come up with incentives for people to have more children. The main reason people don’t have more children is economic. The middle class was the engine that built prosperity and had a lot of children after world war two. Now the middle class is disappearing leaving either rich or poor. In the US there is no maternity leave whatsoever. Child care is very expensive and good facilities are hard to find. Even medical insurance is hard to find if you lose your job. The political situation has created the perfect storm to discourage people from having more children. It should be no surprise that the birth rate is declining. It’s just like gun control – nothing is ever done so it’s silly to think that the situation will improve with only thoughts and prayers.
I’m middle aged. There are approximately 4 billion more people on this planet than when I was in college. Short of a world-ending event, we aren’t going extinct anytime soon.
(I have kids. I don’t think anyone should have kids solely because they are afraid of a decreasing birth rate.)
People make kids because almost every single gene and instinct you have at its root is based on replicating your genes. Its quire literally coded into your DNA. Obviously theres a spectrum but for the most part people instinctively have urges and drive to replicate genes. in other words:
“Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.”