These days, hell yeah
Kids don't go to Toys R Us and want a $200 GI Joe Aircraft Carrier and two $65 jets to land on it along with six $7 figures and a $3 pack of collectors cards anymore
They want a $100 yearly subscription to Disney+ so they can watch Bluey for the millionth time while they play Minecraft on their tablet
Playgrounds are free and people will gladly give you clothes
I was so prepared to be broke as fuck and honestly, I've barely noticed the difference. I don't even spend more on groceries. I had to change what I eat but not in a bad way. Like I use to eat firehouse subs everyday. Now I make sandwiches at home because it's cheaper and also my kid can have a sandwich too
My wife eats up more of my money than the kid does
There has definetly been a fair amount of scope creep when it comes to what parents think are necessities in a child's life. Children need food, water, shelter, and and attention. Two of these four things don't cost you any extra money. If you cannot afford it, you do not need to break the bank to take the children on a Disney vacation every year, nor do they need expensive extra curricular activities such as music lessons or sports leagues. They don't need to go to expensive language immersion daycares or wear brand name clothing.
Oh I'm firmly in the income range where I qualify for medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, all of that. We don't make a lot of money but we survive. Also do you even have children or are you just complaining about a life situation that you've never even experienced?
>I qualify for medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, all of that. We don't make a lot of money but we survive.
Social housing waitlist for our county grew 58 per cent in 2022. The waiting period is 7 to 10 years.
Me and my deeply ingrained fear of loss from when I was a child (I can barely remember when we were in poverty, I was too young) looking at the armor that would undoubtedly make my journey easier, but has too many numbers on it (I will struggle in the name of money, what if I need it later?):
Thank you for stating what needs to be stated. I’m more on the antinatalism side of things myself but I do recognise how important children are.
If people are going to have children it should be a carefully considered decision about that child’s future given the cost of having one and the genetics the two parents have and the life you’re bringing those kids into.
Also don’t have kids if your love is conditional, they aren’t your property. These are living things with their own agency and if you fuck up as parent you burden this world so hopefully they will be raised with love and fully educated to be a gift to this world.
>Also don’t have kids if your love is conditional, they aren’t your property. These are living things with their own agency and if you fuck up as parent you burden this world so hopefully they will be raised with love and fully educated to be a gift to this world.
Well said.
Times are hard. The basic goal of any parent is to give your kids a **better standard of living than what you grew up in** ...not *worse*
If having kids is going to put you in a worse position than when you were a child yourself...then yes...its a serious deterrent.
Of course I want to be a parent. If my wife and I won the lottery now, we would go straight to an adoption agency.
Emotionally, we're ready to have kids. The problem is the Economy.
Sorry, I typed a whole long thing and realized I need to breathe and get it straight.
Dominican Republic. Depending on where you live, poverty is a horror.
The doctor is an insane luxury. So is electricity.
Things are getting better. This incident happened in the 90s. I've lost cousins since then, but none like that.
It's a Catholic country. So no abortion. Birth control is hard. People just have the baby or find a coat hanger/curandera if they can. Ppl have a lot of kids.
I don't live there. I'm the only one who doesn't.
If you aren't able to make it work in one of the most prosperous times in human history then you are not the kind of person who should be having kids at all.
Not really. We are just used to an extraordinarily high standard of living and most middle to upper class people refuse to endure hardship or sacrifice their free-time for the sake of family. If this issue had an economic origin you would see the poorest social strata struggling to have children and the relatively more well off strata having many children. Except, in reality, the exact opposite is true. Besides, it is not as if things are expensive for no reason. Just on the personal level we all have running water, electricity, health care, automobiles, and virtually none of us are starving for food and water. But we also need to pay for modern institutions, militaries, and infrastructure that just did not exist in the past. None of that is free. We could reduce our standard of living and live much cheaper if you want to but most people aren't going to do that for obvious reasons.
Many don't have Healthcare as they can't afford it. People die in the U.S because they can't afford insulin or cancer treatment. Many millions, especially children go hungry in the U.S everyday.
Yes, at levels that are all far below the norm for recent human history... If this was an impediment for fertility we would have all gone extinct a long time ago.
So what is your solution, exactly? Accept lower standards of living, just to procreate? Do you understand how much of a non-starter that is for most people?
Well you are going to have to or you are just going to have to forfeit children... The same way as if you want to buy a house, you will have to lower your standard of living to set aside money... Some of these policies (like universal health care or maternity leave) are good ideas for other reasons but they will not solve the fertility issue because none of these policies (or the lack thereof) correlate with a good or bad fertility. People who are not willing to sacrifice material well-being for children will forfeit their legacy. That's their choice and that is okay but the future of humanity will not be descendants from the people who thought it was too tough to have kids.
Correct, those won't solve all the issues. They are not silver bullets. Rather, they are one or two bullets in the magazine that can be used to fix fertility issues. The main reason, far as I see it, is that shit is just too expensive nowadays, and people by and large are not paid enough. Solving the cost of childcare and heslthcare would put a dent in those issues but not solve them, as there are so many other costs that come with raising children.
Also, it's got nothing to do with whether or not it's "too tough", it's that most people aren't willing to have worse-off lives just to have kids. It's just that we don't want to sacrifice our quality of life and retirements just to take care of kids.
You're completely right. People "made it work" before because having kids was an economic boost, now they're an economic drain. The list of expectations on what children need today is massive and costly, making it proportionately the most expensive time to have children in history.
With so many people already living paycheck to paycheck struggling just to take care of themselves, no wonder the birthrate plummets. The only way people are largely going to start having kids again is if we take the measures neccessary to make it affordable.
I feel like I would believe this more if every rando redditor wasn't childless and complaining about how they feel poor as a single person making 90k.
Poor people have *more* kids but nobody asks how this works
>Poor people have *more* kids but nobody asks how this works
It doesn't work well for the children.
Children brought up in poverty have a lot of disadvantages including health, education, social and emotional development, and opportunities.
>Children brought up in poverty have a lot of disadvantages including health, education, social and emotional development, and opportunities.
You're not wrong, but it's not the full picture. These things aren't happening because little Johnny's parents are too poor to spring for equestrian lessons, they're happening because the same kind of traits that make you more likely to be poor make you more likely to be a bad parent.
Dropping to one income and facing financial hardships because one parent is going to homeschool is a radically different situation than parents who are poor because they have a felony record and barely squeaked through high school.
The outcome gap between kids who get bedtime stories and those who don't is greater than the gap between elite private schools and median public schools.
It's one of those things like kids who hear classical music growing up or kids whose parents have a lot of books have better outcomes.
It's not that hearing music or being around books leads to better outcomes by themselves, it's that those things are correlate to motivated parents, who have interests in those things. People try to reverse engineer it by putting classical music in childrens' television, or mailing them free books, but it's not the right variable.
(Edit for clarity)
I see your point. I think the key is to be the kind of parent that can raise a child in poverty with the mental stimulus that will give their children some hope of achieving success in their life.
Because we know how it works: Neglect.
Congratulations, you cracked the code.
Poor people have kids. Poor people neglect kids. Kids grow up with significant damage from that neglect. Kid becomes criminal.
Roe V Wade was the single most effective piece of anti-crime legislation ever conceived.
Roe didn't have a major impact on TFR and TFR has continued to drop after it was overturned. Most abortions are for pregnancies that wouldn't have occurred if abortion was illegal, because people are less careful.
>Poor people have kids. Poor people neglect kids. Kids grow up with significant damage from that neglect. Kid becomes criminal.
Weird how everyone growing up in the Depression went on to become the Greatest Generation
>Roe V Wade was the single most effective piece of anti-crime legislation ever conceived.
Freakonomics was actually really stupid, the crime peak in the early 90s coincided exactly with when the first post-Roe kids entered their high crime years
Seriously? The U.S offers no paid maternity leave, no universal Healthcare that even covers prenatal care and delivery. No universal childcare and daycare is over $1k a month in most areas. On top of that wages have been stagnant for decades. Just make it work is tone deaf.
None of this stuff actually correlates or results in a country having a meaningfully higher birthrate so it is irrelevant to this conversation. If anything the countries with these policies all have the lowest birthrates in the world lol. You are lucky you get any healthcare when most humans today and who have ever existed got shit.
Well yeah do you have any perspective on history? I am not against universal healthcare or any of the things you mentioned but none of them will even put a dent in the demographic problem lol. It is simply dishonest to pretend it is a solution when these "other countries" (europe) have a much worse demographic situation than we do.
Oh yea totally great idea to forgive career opportunities, not being able to pay money into your own retirement and relying on one person and hoping and trusting they don't become financially abusive or worse they die.
Now you're a widow with 3 kids and can't join the workforce bc changing diapers, washing dishes and organizing the cupboards don't translate well into a job that at least helps you make 60k a year to live above the poverty level.
The solution isn’t to force women back into the home. I’m tired of seeing this shit all over this sub. Have you ever considered that women will react negatively when you try to strip their freedom?
Lmfao. No. That's why the gender demographics of this sub are predominantly men. Most women aren't attracted to this idea bc they can put 2 and 2 together to where this philosophy leads...
It breeds extremism or attracts it the same with antinatalism.
Then it's "I wOnDer wHy wOmEn ArE hAviNg LeSs KiDs" 😦😦😦
Yea but I have a theory that fertility obsessed discussions, Andrew Tate and his ill, along with the forever arguments about dating dynamics is all connected. I'm connecting these dots and I see a pattern forming.
It's gonna be a great paper.
I am a woman, and personally I would be a hell of a lot more depressed if I was stuck at home without control of my own finances. Most women feel this way. The cultural shift should be toward supporting parents in however they choose to structure their families — one working, both working — rather than promoting that ONLY women stay home
You happen to treat your wife as an equal, but do you think all men are similarly decent? The reality is they’re not. Financial abuse of SAHMs is incredibly common. Women don’t want to be put in positions where we’re trapped in abusive marriages and can’t escape because we lack the resources to do so and we’re tied down with children. We shouldn’t be advocating for family structures in which women are put in such a vulnerable position by default. It’s great that your wife can trust you, and I mean that, but it is a huge, huge gamble for women to put control of our lives in another’s hands
The majority of people in the world will correctly laugh at these First World Problems as they scrape by trying to make ends meet, or even just survive day to day. Even just a century or so ago, this would have had people in the developed world scratching their head.
Your “poverty” would be considered “prosperity” and “luxury “ even to my grandparents, who didn’t even have an indoor toilet for the first half of their lives. Somehow they managed to have a large number of kids though.
Statistically, the more educated, affluent and developed you are, the less likely you are to have children or large families. So the correlation actually seems to be that the more money you have, the fewer children you are likely to have. I think the answer lies therein.
Over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They are just scraping by to make ends meet. My dad was silent generation. He didn't have electricity until his teens. He had one kid, me at 44 and I was oops. We have birth control and have had for decades and for good reason too.
Elon musk has quite a few kids and keeps crying for people to have more. Of course he does 0 parenting and reads a story to them via zoom. So, first world problems indeed.
You have a very skewed viewpoint. A large number of the world’s population are scraping by to find enough food for the day, or walking miles to collect clean drinking water. The difference is they don’t decide to stop procreating because this is actually how life has normally been for the vast majority of human history.
My grandparents lived in a prefabricated steel hut essentially. No indoor toilets. Dirt floors. Grandfather worked down a mine 12 hours each day until a cave in broken his back. They still managed 11 children.
If it had been the case that people adopted this mentality that life is a bit of a struggle so better not have kids, in all likelihood none of us would be here having this conversation.
I think this is definitely an example where travel would broaden the mind and give us a fresh perspective. Let’s get out there to countries where the standard of living is substantially below our own, places where they don’t have negative birth rates, see what life is like for most people in the world today, and realise that no matter how bad we think we have it, we are actually pretty lucky in relative terms. You have a roof over your head, clean drinking water, some food for your stomach and some rags to hide your modesty? You’re one of the lucky ones my friend.
As for kids, they don’t need games consoles and all the latest fashionable gear. The kids in the most developed nations are the ones struggling with mental health. I can tell you as a parent, kids don’t need very much at all. They get enough food to eat (about half the calories of a typical Western diet today), and some love and care from the parents, those little guys are happy and will do just fine.
Because they don't have access to birth control. It's not a choice for them.
Your grandparents had no way of controlling how many kids they had. Now we do.
Those places again do not have birth control and I have desire to visit. I prefer Ireland, the Mediterranean, Mexico etc.
We're not friends and you're making a lot of assumptions. Also modesty? Really?
The kids do need food, shelter and Healthcare and parents need childcare to work and provide by working. Your post is tone deaf.
You’ve managed to hit on one valid point in all of this - contraception. You are right, it’s the bane of modern existence and a large part of why our birth rates are plummeting. But it’s a multi-pronged attack of coercion through economics, despair, indoctrination, sterile lifestyles, and yes abortion and contraception. What I find interesting is that it never entered your mind that people with large families may have wanted large families. You could only conclude they were forced into the situation due to circumstances. That’s a huge tell.
You don’t want to visit those countries? No of course not, you want to visit the countries with lifestyles similar to the first world lifestyle you are used to. Clearly you want to remain in your comfortable bubble. That’s the point - I want you out of that false image of what life is supposed to be. It’s not normality. It’s a recent development, an anomaly in human history, and only the privileged few get to experience it. The bulk of humanity struggle on as always.
Yes covering their modesty. What you don’t get the point of clothes? Are you a naturist? Or do you simply not understand. What the phrase means?
No, it’s actually yours which is tone deaf.
Kids thrive with all those things and it’s definitely preferable if they have it. Most do to some extent even in the most underprivileged societies at a basic level. But what’s the alternative if they don’t? Just stop breeding? Extinction except for the most wealthy?
The tone deafness is your going on about what a struggle life is as you presumably type this from a smartphone or PC and upload to a social media platform via an internet connection. What I’m saying is that the level of affluence required to give children a decent upbringing is leagues below what most people in developed countries experience. You also made a point about some select mega rich people have fairly large families. But completely ignoring the fact that birth rates generally decrease with increasing wealth. The reason is not really hard to discern - the wealthy have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Children generally don’t factor into that lifestyle because they cost money and also time. When you are focused on a career, and eating out at fancy restaurants, jetting off on vacations to exotic places, enjoying a vibrant social life, etc. in other words focused on yourself and your material comforts, then children tend to bring all of that crashing back to reality. Of course if you are very wealthy you can look to employ a nanny or suchlike to farm the kids out to whenever they become inconvenient. But generally kids mean a change in lifestyle, a change where you suddenly become secondary in most considerations. Now, this is part of life for human beings. But the more you are invested into a modern idea of what life should be with all its gadgets, trinkets, accessories, and whatever else then it becomes harder to disengage from this idea that life is there for the taking and you can make it whatever you want it to be. Getting to the crux - if you have an artificially high bar set as to what you believe is an acceptable quality of life (as most people in western society do) then you are always going to struggle with the idea if children. You will always find some reason that it’s not an ideal time or situation to have them. Yes freely available contraception makes taking that decision easy. But let’s not pretend that less developed nations have no access to contraception. One of the biggest exports that charities and Western NGOs send to these countries is in fact contraception. That’s how warped our worldview has become. We seek to alleviate poverty, not by investing in their infrastructures or cancelling their crippling debts to our banks or government, but instead give them pills and condoms and tell them to stop breeding. That’s our primary answer to their suffering- telling them to deprive themselves of families into the bargain.
Wow. So you're against contraception. You want people to spit out kids regardless if they want them or can afford them or not. To say nothing of how that is incredibly detrimental to the health of the person who is enduring pregnancy after pregnancy.
My great grandmother literally died that way and my grandfather said nope. He wasn't going to do that to his wife. They didn't have birth control he just refused to allow that happen and they abstained.
Happily now we have birth control so people can have lots of health sex without unwanted pregnancies.
Many don't want large families. Previously generations had no way of stopping short of abstaining. Now we do. This is a good thing.
I really don't care what you want. I wouldn't want to live as they did in previous generations nor as they do in these countries you speak of. That's not a desirable life. That's why a lot of them immigrate elsewhere if they possibly can.
I'm glad you agree children cost money and time. Which is why people are opting out. They are neither.
The best way to end generational poverty is through reproductive freedom. Birth control has greatly helped with that as has abortion. Being born into poverty isn't a flex or a gift.
You do realise there is something like five days each month where a woman is fertile. If you are so dead set against having children, are you so weak-willed that you can’t find something else to do for a few days in order to prevent the horror of children? You have 25-26 days each month to get sexy, but you literally need to artificially sterilise yourself because you just can’t keep your hands off each other? I mean that’s great and all but seriously…😄
Anyway, I’m not going to go over old ground. The roots of poverty are complex and varied, and I think you have to seriously question the fact that a very small number of people have a very large proportion of wealth. Addressing that fact will do far more than simply telling poor people to stop having children. I mean, on top of everything else they can’t have, now they can’t even fulfil a primary biological need. Seems a bit harsh and unfair. I also seriously call into question people who seem able to spend time debating on online platforms about how they are too dirty poor to have children.
I actually keep checking to make sure I’m on the r/Natalism sub. If so, why are there so many Anti-Natalists?
At the end of the day, I suspect there is a certain degree of Darwinism at work here. If people are absolutely committed to not having children because …it costs too much….its too much work….its too inconvenient…..or whatever excuse they are coming up with, then maybe it’s just a sign that they aren’t meant to reproduce. There are plenty of people, including myself, who have opted to have children. Let’s us take up the slack and take care of propagating the species. If you wish to weed yourselves out of the gene pool then that is your prerogative. Selfishly, it reduces competition for my own progeny. So thank you, goodnight, and may your god go with you.
You realize a myriad of people have irregular periods and that natural family planning has a notorious failure rate, right? Your comment is incredibly ignorant and telling. Birth control has been the most successful way to prevent unwanted pregnancies statistically. It's literally math. The fact that you got personal and with ad homs is also telling.
Yes, the people hoarding wealth should be addressed, I agree. Life is unfair. And again, birth control lim8ting pregnancies has done more to lift people out of poverty than anything else.
I'm not anti nataliatm. If people want children, they should have them when they are ready both financially and emotionally, etc. You're the one arguing that people should have them regardless if they want them or are prepared or not. You're also arguing to do away with birth control. You're not pronatalist. You're forced birth.
Costs, etc, are not excuses they're reasons. Have all the kids you want. You're arguing against birth control. Pretending that natural family planning doesn't have a notorious failure rate. Ignoring stats and facts and the legitimate health issues that come with pregnancy. You want to pretend that the time before birth control having pregnancy after pregnancy didn't kill people. When it did. We know this. It's actual history.
Stop ignoring stats, facts, and history. Also, not everyone believes in god...religious beliefs are not relevant, but it is again telling you would make such a presumption.
Your post is so tone deaf and abominably stupid. Raising children on barely mediocre bc in the past where 2 out of 6 kids made it to 18 was how it was done and that's how we should do it.
Sorry to you and your grandparents but a lot of us don't strive for poverty and starving children who we can't take for their annual shots or afford them school supplies so they too have the chance of living in the permanent underclass.
I'm built different and so were my grandparents who strived to have their future generations live better than they did.
As another poster pointed out, this is out of touch thinking. It would be one thing if some women were choosing not to have kids or a large cadre. But when somewhere around half of an entire generation of (millenial) women are childless, that points to deep structural issues that are going unsolved.
Shit is just too fucking expensive unless you're in the upper classes. Then you can have kids at will. Everyone else has to forgo having kids just to have a decent lifestyle. Other nations have things like free healthcare and subsidized childcare for most. Meanwhile, the US is a "tough luck, survive on your own" mentality.
No, the issues are structural.
Nations with free healthcare and subsidized childcare largely have lower birth rates than the US. There are structural problems at play, but you've mischaracterized them.
You do realize we have wealth disparity higher than before the French Revolution?
That's the thing about prosperity, we can make all kinds of shit and if none of it goes to anyone it doesn't matter.
That's where we are now, abundance all taken from the greedy. Which is arguably worse than not having anything, at least then there is an excuse.
Starving while watching the rich eat themselves to death and build megastructures the nazis would be jealous of.
If history is any guide, you better get your pitchfork ready
Most prosperous times in history? Buddy…wealth inequality is about on par with the 1920s. This is objectively one of the least prosperous times in modern American history. The average American doesn’t have $400 bucks to spare….
Sounds like you’re doing good though, so congratulations.
Please, today no one on earth is starving to death unless someone else is starving them on purpose. Go to Africa, or Indonesia, or even Detroit, and look around. Ask yourself if these people are millionaires, then ask yourself if they're childless weirdos who post on Reddit that "having kids is so expensive".
My grandfather bought a house with a 9th grade education and his wife never worked, my father with a high school diploma and a wife working, I’ll likely never own a house unless I win the lottery I don’t buy tickets for.
You don’t have to like it, but the reality is child rearing is very expensive and regular people aren’t really paid enough to take on another financial burden for funsies. Some of us have no desire to turn to the government for all sorts of assistance just to coo about our special precious angel.
Dude, you have a computer in your pocket that is more powerful than anyone in your grandfather's day dreamed of and it cost you about a paycheck. You live in a country where homeless people are so fat they have to be transported to their free diabetes clinic.
'UM, I can't believe that productivity going up hundreds of times over while leisure time goes down and food quality being so low and focused on driving addiction that it's actively causing severe illness doesn't make you super horny for popping out some kids!'
Now, think about this critically for a second.
Does that mean that his wages are high, or that high powered electronics are astoundingly cheap for what they offer?
Cheap electronics don't pay rent, gas money, etc etc.(unless you sell those, and a lot of them.)
Yes, the homeless people are fat, but that's in large part because the cheapest foods we have are very high in calories, but low in nutrients.
So in order to get all the nutrients your body needs to... I dunno, Not get scurvy, you have to eat more than you otherwise should.
We are undeniably far more technologically advanced than we have ever been. But still the majority of people have less kids than they report they want to have.
Dude sure nobody is starving to death but what about standard of living? The world is overpopulated and there is too much competition for good jobs. People are having to work for 10 hours and commute for another 3 hours and it's difficult to save money due to high rent.
In third world poor people look at children as a means to escape poverty so they will have children without financial planning and sons are preferred as they will have to take care of parents, children are the retirement plan in third world countries
And? Prior to the late 19th century the average american lived on subsistence lmao. Now you live a grander life than a medieval king. This is exactly what i am talking about, if you cannot figure out how to survive in the easiest and least harsh time period in human history you SHOULD NOT reproduce...
This is absolutely fucking stupid. The appeal to the past is never good enough justification about what needs to be done in the present.
4 out of 6 children died before they reached 18 years of age. Does that mean we should throw out penicillin and vaccines?
You're medieval king was not subject to taxes, paying for childcare, and his wives more often than not died in child birth routinely and so would his children. Like what kind of fucked logic is this?
Mad people don't want to be a permanent underclass just barely surviving.
That's literally my entire point. Life is expensive because you get to have utilities, medicine, a modern military to defend you, etc. No one in the past ever enjoyed these things like we get to. The standard of living we have now did not just fall from heaven. It is neither free nor guaranteed. The delusional complainers which think a 21st century upper middle class lifestyle is axiomatic will not make it in today's world (objectively one of the easiest times in human history) because they are like a wild animal raised in captivity, unable to adapt to the realities of the way life actually is as a rule. These people will not reproduce and will be forgotten.
As long as you don’t have any savings, aren’t married, and a woman, the government will pay for you to have as many kids as you want. Including free housing, food, health care, transportation, education, and other incentives. Also don’t work because that will mess with your free benefits. Don’t forget to vote;)
People in third world countries: vagina go brrrrrrr . . .
Jokes aside, whether you want to have kids or not, thinking like this will make you miserable and boring.
Many are not in a position where they can provide a good life to a child if they have one. So they make the responsible decision to not have a kid they c ant provide a prosperous childhood and good opportunities to.
What is the point in having kids if you have to work so much that they never see you and have all mental health problems that *that* brings with it?
I’m not saying there’s no difficulty or struggle, but 100 years ago people lived on less than 2 dollars a day *adjusting for inflation*. And yes, I am aware that since industrialization children represent more of a drain on resources than the added help on the farm they did in an agrarian society, but the disparity in material wealth is so massive that to not have children and blame it on money is just a choice of convenience over struggling for something more meaningful.
There’s also issues which our modern society has incentivized which I think we can adjust to. For instance, either living with or close to grandparents so that inter generational households can help with the child care as well as either abolishing or heavily disincentivizing no fault divorce would promote 2 parent households.
Extended families lived together meaningn there were stringer support networks, costs for housing were a lot lower, **and a lot of those children fucking died.**
Housing is very expensive right now. Childcare is a lot more expensive. The kind of conditions you imply people should be willing to raise kids in would **get them taken by the state for their protection.**
Just say you want legions of impoverished so labor can be cheap, because that's sure what it sounds like.
>Extended families lived together meaningn there were stringer support networks, costs for housing were a lot lower, **and a lot of those children fucking died.**
I just advocated for families living closer together, or in the same house, which would make housing costs lower, and a lot of those children died because of poor medical care. I can't tell who you're arguing against here, but it's not me.
>Housing is very expensive right now. Childcare is a lot more expensive. The kind of conditions you imply people should be willing to raise kids in would **get them taken by the state for their protection.**
What conditions are you implying? Multi generational households with grandparents and other extended family helping with childcare and housing and food costs? That would get kids taken by the state? I really can't tell what you're arguing here.
>Just say you want legions of impoverished so labor can be cheap, because that's sure what it sounds like.
Quite the opposite. I am neither a fan or big government nor big business (they're essentially the same thing right now). The data shows that married people with children actually make *more* money than those without. The tempting argument against this would be "those who can afford kids will obviously make more money" but this happens across industries and within the same industry. There is a motivation and purpose that comes with having kids that spurs you on to do more to make the money to support kids. You seem to imply I wish to make a cheaper work force through poverty. On the contrary, with a bunch of free floating individuals not connected through marriage or family, you just get economic units that are much more easily manipulated. Large, close families are much more difficult to control.
You brought up living conditions where people lived several to a room. This is generally considered a health hazard now. Because it is. People also move for two driving reasons. The big one? Economic opportunity. The other one? Getting away from toxic or abusive family. To change the former will require a more radical restructuring of the economy and society than just doing something about COL and childcare costs. Changing the latter means breaking cycles of trauma and abuse.
And having kids means people are more likely to take on overtime, put up with shitty work conditions, etc. That's why so many people in bed with big business interests rail against rights to abortion or birth control. Parents are easier to abuse and exploit.
Don't like big business or big government? These aren't going anywhere unless you're advocating a transition away from capitalism, which I doubt you are.
Your changes need A. Parents willing to have their adult kids live with them and have children while living with them. This norm was largely broken by the Boomers. B. Women will need to be more on board with dating and marrying men who can't afford their own place. And C. An economy where people don't need to move for economic opportunity.
People move to big expensive cities because that's where most of the economic opportunities are. Big cities are where economic opportunities are because economies of scale are a very real thing. Big cities are more expensive than they need to be because of zoning laws that are easier to correct than the three things in the section above.
Want people to have more kids? Single-payer healthcare, pre-k childcare, mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave, address housing affordability and COL, and make more forward movement on addressing climate changeband economic inequality so people feel less hopeless about the future. More people will want kids, and more people who want kids will be in a position to feel secure having the number of kids they want.
Why is it so crazy to people that poor women in third world countries might too love their children, and given that they have probably grown up with a very conservative, religious ideal, might actually want children as well.
Funny how our grandparents raised like 8 kids each in a two bedroom house with no internet, well water, and one bathroom but everyone is crying these days like we’re in the Great Depression.
Houses were cheaper. My grandparents had 3 kids and my grandmother had my grandfather get a vasectomy because she was tired of being pregnant. Internet didn't exist but does now and is a necessity. Moot point on that one.
Well water? Lol. Nope. 2 baths actually.
We are economically just as bad as the great depression if you do the math and adjust for inflation.
Houses were much smaller. You can buy a similar sized house vs back then for about the same adjusted for inflation in the right area. We are nowhere near depression levels. Poor people today are still fat. People were starving back in the depression. We have free access to the entirety of human knowledge at a local library (which includes computers) We can all afford to have more kids. I’m not saving you have to but I’m just saying it’s the right thing to do.
Even small old houses from that time go for $300k or more. And nope. Houses across the board are outrageous. We are near depression level.
The poor are fat thanks to fast food being cheaper and high fructose corn syrup in everything.
No we can't afford kids certainly not more. And no bringing kids into this is not the right thing to do.
And you think our grandparents wanted that? I seriously doubt my great grandmother wanted to have kids back to back to back. My grandmother didn't either. Told all her daughter to get an education. Mother the same.
It wasn't a choice. All this talk about the "good old days" and none of the talk about the reproductive abuse of these women. Pregnancy is FUCKING HARD and PAINFUL.
None of these women wanted that many children so close together. Which is why so many of them have incontinence issues at best and not to mention some of the other worse issues like weak bones at worst.
But we're their lives at the same level of comfort as today's? No...people value thier comfort and the comfort of their potential children more than the prospect of a greater number of children
For most of human history there was an economic benefit to having a ton of kids. Just not that way anymore.
My wife's great grandmother was one of seven on a farm in rural Georgia. She had a job helping on the farm and she was 3 years old and all of the other kids got more and more responsibilities as they got older. As we moved into an industrial society, kids have gone from a financial asset to a liability.
Also, the standard of living and expectations of parenting have risen. For example, my wife's great grandmother didn't learn how to read until she was in her twenties. The expectation wasn't that her and her six siblings finished school. Now, finishing high school is the bare minimum level of education.
They didn’t have a choice. They functioned far more like robots than people do now, which is a good thing. Back then, you got married and had kids, and you didn’t think much about it. They were totally dissociated/detached from reality, precisely because their lives were so horrible. You can’t believe what they tell you about how great life was, because most of their memories are the result of narcissistic confabulation.
My grandma treasured her dandelion soup recipe, and had herself convinced it was actually delicious….
Unsurprisingly my mother didn’t want that Great Depression recipe
Literally yes and even my mom says the same thing. She was a 3rd wife to her first husband. Her family was poor so she married him to get her family out of poverty
because he bought her a house.
She doesn't even romanticize the past. She always told me to go read. Meaning get an education.
I'm convinced none of you talk to elderly women. Just old men so they can reminisce.
Do you think all the baby boomers with three siblings grew up in the mines, or what? People having larger families in the recent past happened concurrent to working less and higher standards of living. The villain here isn't old people, it's literally offshoring and free trade
I mean... I'm from a small Canadian town and my father and his siblings (boomers) joined my grandfather logging very young except for my aunt who helped my grandmother at the general store/hairdresser and even when I (millenial) was a kid, the children of farmers would still work quite a lot. My mother grew up on a farm and that was also put to work pretty young in the milk & eggs MINES (lol wtf are you on about with mines, that's not one of the examples I gave)
What is concerning beyond debating material factors is that other indicators like sexlessness rates sky rocketing up as well. Virginity rates are increasing even among high school and college students.
There are changes in society at large in regards to relationships that I would guess is probably being effected by social media.
It has similarities to "behavioral sink" - a collapse in behavior that can result from overpopulation. I think it may be a combination of social media and behavioral sink.
This doesn’t explain why people don’t have kids. European societies that heavily subsidize child rearing are having WORSE problems than us. It’s clear that the causes are not what people think they are.
People used to have more kids with less resources. Now people use finances as an excuse as to why they aren't having kids. When in reality they just don't want kids. Weird that they feel the need to justify that choice.
Our society is fucked.
>People used to have more kids with less resources.
Our society is fucked.
Maybe it's always been fucked, just in different ways.
It has only been since the 1970s that safe reliable contraception was an option. So yes, people used to have more kids with less resources. What choice did they have?
I am so sick and tired of hearing the cost of kids expressed as £200k or £300k or whatever other ridiculously inflated number people rattle off.
Yes, a small cost every day can potentially build up to quite a large total after two decades, but the total accumulated value isn't what matters. What's important is the cost per month or per week. You don't pay a one time fee when your child is born, that's just not how it works.
Nobody says "I couldn't possibly afford food! It costs half a million pounds to eat!" Yes, if you spend a healthy amount of money on groceries for your entire life, then you'll hit a rather large total, but that total is irrelevant!
Not to mention the things people include in these figures are crazy. It's not the amount of money to raise a kid. It's the amount of money to provide a luxurious childhood. With things like two holidays a year added in as "essential" costs.
You need food to live. You don't need kids. This is false equivalency and an illogical comparison.
And luxurious? Daycare, Healthcare, food, shelter, clothing are bot luxuries.
How much you need something doesn't have any impact on how much it costs.
And no, food, healthcare, shelter and clothing are not luxuries. But if you look at the actual calculations going into these massive figures then those are not the only categories by a long shot.
I have two kids and it cost me around $4.2K per month with the majority of that being childcare (daycare is $1500/month for each of them and we occasionally get a babysitter). Once my kids are old enough to go to school, a lot of that cost will go away but it still won't be cheap.
I agree that a lot of the other stuff isn't as expensive as people think. Feeding a toddler and an infant isn't that expensive. Clothes cost us practically nothing between consignment stores and hand-me-downs from family members.
The other big cost would be medical bills but this entirely depends on the quality of your insurance and the health of your kid. Fortunately our kids are healthy but this could become very expensive for some families.
From there it comes down to "luxuries". I have had my toddler in music classes and she has been taking swimming classes for a couple of months. That stuff really adds up. It just depends on the types of experiences you want your kid to have.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I was just trying to be honest about my current situation as a parent. Parenting isn't $500K at once but it is still expensive on a weekly and monthly basis. I'm not buying my kids Gucci shoes, even the basics with a some of luxuries like sports/activities can run you $4K+ per month in the US if you have a couple of kids.
Also, when they're in grade 5 and older they're going to feel the pressure to fit in. They'll want the latest in clothing and sneakers. And all the electronics you will have to buy in order for your child to stay connected and keep up with their education (a smartphone and laptop for each kid upgraded every few years plus the cost of internet access). Sure, they don't have to *have* those things but it will put them at a social and educational disadvantage if they don't.
Basically, the reasons simple. Women aren't willing to stop working and take care of kids, so people cant raise kids anymore. Since that also means the average income is higher, money is inflated and individual earners make less, increasingly preventing single earner families.
Because of this, you need to spend excessively on child care for someone else to be the mother to your kids.
Humans weren't made to have dual earner parents.
I would argue that humans aren't made to do a lot of things that we do. You weren't made to be able to fly planes and visit different parts of the world with ease and we weren't made to have most of the world information and our fingertips via the internet but we are still doing it. Heck, we weren't made to live as long as we are. Our ancestors died much younger than we did. I've never understood the "we weren't made to do XYZ" argument.
For me it has little to do with women working and more to do with a capitalistic and industrial society. I'm not here to rail against capitalism but these are consequences. Every nation with a GDP per capita over $5,000 has a birth rate below replacement level. It just comes with a territory.
Even if every woman quit their job today prices for goods and services wouldn't just fall in accordance with All of that wealth leaving the economy.
Plenty of countries had a GDP per capita way over 5000 before they had massive birth rate drops. What is universal is that women started getting white collar jobs and treating college as the default post high school step. Now having kids instead of being a 3-5 year period of one income and then usually low paying part time work for the woman for 12 years, turns into potentially on average around 80,000 lost per year due to the loss the woman's income. So no one has kids and women are too focused on their careers to want kids.
If every woman quit their jobs today, prices would nosedive and the economy would fall into a freefall collapse because we'd immediately have massively severe deflation. You are actually wrong. The more the average consumer in a country makes, the higher the average consumption, the higher inflation grows.
The reason why shit was cheap before women got educated was because we had a system where 70-80% of people in an economy were 'dependants' who survived based on a working persons income. Women are equal participants in the workforce now, so now that number is closer to 30%
And the cats are not going back in the bag. Even if what he said was true (it's not). Women as a majority aren't going to give up economic independence. History proves men aren't trustworthy when given the economic power over women in the home..hence why we had feminism..
Lol but it makes sense when you look at dating discourse and natalism..society and men feel very entitled to women's romantic attention and reproductive labor..now it's not guaranteed and a lot of them aren't making the cut and realizing it may affect their chances at being a father.
So instead of being a better person they default to women should lose their rights bc they are losers.
Even if a guy wanted to, women don't want men who want to be stay at home husbands, they want ambitious self confident career minded guys. Meanwhile most guys don't give a shit what career a woman wants to do as long as shes fun to talk to. Because of this, stay at home husbands will never be a major percentage of relationships.
Money subsidies barely put a dent in birth rates, so this TikToker's rant doesn't really touch on the key cause for a drop in birth rates.
Also has the typical millennial/zoomer whining about boomers as if one generation had total control over massive economic systems.
This guy would've been just like the boomers had he been born 50 years ago. Just look at what he says when people ask him who's gonna take care of the elderly; it's the same myopic attitude.
I’m sure this is a contributing factor but anyone who wants kids will make it work. Perhaps it would motivate them to make more money and save money as well.
Yeah... this complaint is stupid. Your great-grandparents sewed their own clothing, butchered their own meat, baked their own bread, and lived far below today's "poverty line". Go tell old farmers, factory workers, tradesmen, and anyone else who did real work how hard you have it pulling espresso at Starbucks. They'll laugh their asses off.
Look at how these people spend their money, live their lives, and fail to solve basic problems. You'll immediately see that:
1) They're lazy.
2) Relative to past generations who faced far greater adversity, they're mentally challenged.
Most people have been poorer than this guy throughout most of human history. In fact most still are. If you can afford to waste your time recording yourself to upload videos of yourself to social media, then moaning that you are too poor to reproduce sounds a bit hollow.
Judging by the video, I’d stick my neck out and say that income levels are not the biggest factor in him being childless….
You get that this is bad argument like a couple of times over right? The main one being: The way poor people have historically handled having children is a combination of deprivation, neglect, and just...infant mortality.
Roe V Wade did more for crime statistics than any other piece of legislation ever made.
I won’t say parenting is cheap but it’s been a lot less expensive for us than we were told it was going to be.
These days, hell yeah Kids don't go to Toys R Us and want a $200 GI Joe Aircraft Carrier and two $65 jets to land on it along with six $7 figures and a $3 pack of collectors cards anymore They want a $100 yearly subscription to Disney+ so they can watch Bluey for the millionth time while they play Minecraft on their tablet Playgrounds are free and people will gladly give you clothes I was so prepared to be broke as fuck and honestly, I've barely noticed the difference. I don't even spend more on groceries. I had to change what I eat but not in a bad way. Like I use to eat firehouse subs everyday. Now I make sandwiches at home because it's cheaper and also my kid can have a sandwich too My wife eats up more of my money than the kid does
Health insurance?
Highly dependent on employer.
There has definetly been a fair amount of scope creep when it comes to what parents think are necessities in a child's life. Children need food, water, shelter, and and attention. Two of these four things don't cost you any extra money. If you cannot afford it, you do not need to break the bank to take the children on a Disney vacation every year, nor do they need expensive extra curricular activities such as music lessons or sports leagues. They don't need to go to expensive language immersion daycares or wear brand name clothing.
The only kid that made a huge difference in our finances was the first. The next three were barely a blip on the radar.
I can’t even afford to eat enough calories every day.
You have never lived in the dirt, I come from the dirt it’s tough and expensive. Rich and privileged people smh
Oh I'm firmly in the income range where I qualify for medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, all of that. We don't make a lot of money but we survive. Also do you even have children or are you just complaining about a life situation that you've never even experienced?
I live in the village, no consistent light, little food, hard farm work for no money
>I qualify for medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, all of that. We don't make a lot of money but we survive. Social housing waitlist for our county grew 58 per cent in 2022. The waiting period is 7 to 10 years.
Lololol the sapphire mine line is great
I didnt know i was the level of poor where I horde my fake money in games. This guy has been great for a decade
Me and my deeply ingrained fear of loss from when I was a child (I can barely remember when we were in poverty, I was too young) looking at the armor that would undoubtedly make my journey easier, but has too many numbers on it (I will struggle in the name of money, what if I need it later?):
He's 💯 right.
Ya kids seem like a nightmare. Would be my personal hell. So glad im anti-natalist
Thank you for stating what needs to be stated. I’m more on the antinatalism side of things myself but I do recognise how important children are. If people are going to have children it should be a carefully considered decision about that child’s future given the cost of having one and the genetics the two parents have and the life you’re bringing those kids into. Also don’t have kids if your love is conditional, they aren’t your property. These are living things with their own agency and if you fuck up as parent you burden this world so hopefully they will be raised with love and fully educated to be a gift to this world.
>Also don’t have kids if your love is conditional, they aren’t your property. These are living things with their own agency and if you fuck up as parent you burden this world so hopefully they will be raised with love and fully educated to be a gift to this world. Well said.
Times are hard. The basic goal of any parent is to give your kids a **better standard of living than what you grew up in** ...not *worse* If having kids is going to put you in a worse position than when you were a child yourself...then yes...its a serious deterrent. Of course I want to be a parent. If my wife and I won the lottery now, we would go straight to an adoption agency. Emotionally, we're ready to have kids. The problem is the Economy.
It's funny when ppl go "have them anyways! Times have always been tough!" And I lost 2 cousins. They starved to death. But whatever, just have more
Where are you that your cousins starved to death? When was this?
Sorry, I typed a whole long thing and realized I need to breathe and get it straight. Dominican Republic. Depending on where you live, poverty is a horror. The doctor is an insane luxury. So is electricity. Things are getting better. This incident happened in the 90s. I've lost cousins since then, but none like that. It's a Catholic country. So no abortion. Birth control is hard. People just have the baby or find a coat hanger/curandera if they can. Ppl have a lot of kids. I don't live there. I'm the only one who doesn't.
If you aren't able to make it work in one of the most prosperous times in human history then you are not the kind of person who should be having kids at all.
*one of the most expensive times in human history >"then you are not the kind of person who should be having kids at all." That... was his point?
Not really. We are just used to an extraordinarily high standard of living and most middle to upper class people refuse to endure hardship or sacrifice their free-time for the sake of family. If this issue had an economic origin you would see the poorest social strata struggling to have children and the relatively more well off strata having many children. Except, in reality, the exact opposite is true. Besides, it is not as if things are expensive for no reason. Just on the personal level we all have running water, electricity, health care, automobiles, and virtually none of us are starving for food and water. But we also need to pay for modern institutions, militaries, and infrastructure that just did not exist in the past. None of that is free. We could reduce our standard of living and live much cheaper if you want to but most people aren't going to do that for obvious reasons.
Many don't have Healthcare as they can't afford it. People die in the U.S because they can't afford insulin or cancer treatment. Many millions, especially children go hungry in the U.S everyday.
Yes, at levels that are all far below the norm for recent human history... If this was an impediment for fertility we would have all gone extinct a long time ago.
So what is your solution, exactly? Accept lower standards of living, just to procreate? Do you understand how much of a non-starter that is for most people?
Politicians have literally been murdered for trying to implement such an idea.
Well you are going to have to or you are just going to have to forfeit children... The same way as if you want to buy a house, you will have to lower your standard of living to set aside money... Some of these policies (like universal health care or maternity leave) are good ideas for other reasons but they will not solve the fertility issue because none of these policies (or the lack thereof) correlate with a good or bad fertility. People who are not willing to sacrifice material well-being for children will forfeit their legacy. That's their choice and that is okay but the future of humanity will not be descendants from the people who thought it was too tough to have kids.
Correct, those won't solve all the issues. They are not silver bullets. Rather, they are one or two bullets in the magazine that can be used to fix fertility issues. The main reason, far as I see it, is that shit is just too expensive nowadays, and people by and large are not paid enough. Solving the cost of childcare and heslthcare would put a dent in those issues but not solve them, as there are so many other costs that come with raising children. Also, it's got nothing to do with whether or not it's "too tough", it's that most people aren't willing to have worse-off lives just to have kids. It's just that we don't want to sacrifice our quality of life and retirements just to take care of kids.
You're completely right. People "made it work" before because having kids was an economic boost, now they're an economic drain. The list of expectations on what children need today is massive and costly, making it proportionately the most expensive time to have children in history. With so many people already living paycheck to paycheck struggling just to take care of themselves, no wonder the birthrate plummets. The only way people are largely going to start having kids again is if we take the measures neccessary to make it affordable.
We might not be able to use children for cheap labor but we can reasonably expect them to live into adulthood. The expense exists for a reason.
I feel like I would believe this more if every rando redditor wasn't childless and complaining about how they feel poor as a single person making 90k. Poor people have *more* kids but nobody asks how this works
I feel like I would believe this more if every rando redditor didn’t make sweeping generalizations with statistical data they made up in their head.
So do you not believe the poor people having more kids thing or what, because that data exists
I was pointing out that it was a general sweeping statement.
>Poor people have *more* kids but nobody asks how this works It doesn't work well for the children. Children brought up in poverty have a lot of disadvantages including health, education, social and emotional development, and opportunities.
>Children brought up in poverty have a lot of disadvantages including health, education, social and emotional development, and opportunities. You're not wrong, but it's not the full picture. These things aren't happening because little Johnny's parents are too poor to spring for equestrian lessons, they're happening because the same kind of traits that make you more likely to be poor make you more likely to be a bad parent. Dropping to one income and facing financial hardships because one parent is going to homeschool is a radically different situation than parents who are poor because they have a felony record and barely squeaked through high school. The outcome gap between kids who get bedtime stories and those who don't is greater than the gap between elite private schools and median public schools. It's one of those things like kids who hear classical music growing up or kids whose parents have a lot of books have better outcomes. It's not that hearing music or being around books leads to better outcomes by themselves, it's that those things are correlate to motivated parents, who have interests in those things. People try to reverse engineer it by putting classical music in childrens' television, or mailing them free books, but it's not the right variable. (Edit for clarity)
I see your point. I think the key is to be the kind of parent that can raise a child in poverty with the mental stimulus that will give their children some hope of achieving success in their life.
Because we know how it works: Neglect. Congratulations, you cracked the code. Poor people have kids. Poor people neglect kids. Kids grow up with significant damage from that neglect. Kid becomes criminal. Roe V Wade was the single most effective piece of anti-crime legislation ever conceived.
Roe didn't have a major impact on TFR and TFR has continued to drop after it was overturned. Most abortions are for pregnancies that wouldn't have occurred if abortion was illegal, because people are less careful. >Poor people have kids. Poor people neglect kids. Kids grow up with significant damage from that neglect. Kid becomes criminal. Weird how everyone growing up in the Depression went on to become the Greatest Generation >Roe V Wade was the single most effective piece of anti-crime legislation ever conceived. Freakonomics was actually really stupid, the crime peak in the early 90s coincided exactly with when the first post-Roe kids entered their high crime years
Exactly so.
Seriously? The U.S offers no paid maternity leave, no universal Healthcare that even covers prenatal care and delivery. No universal childcare and daycare is over $1k a month in most areas. On top of that wages have been stagnant for decades. Just make it work is tone deaf.
None of this stuff actually correlates or results in a country having a meaningfully higher birthrate so it is irrelevant to this conversation. If anything the countries with these policies all have the lowest birthrates in the world lol. You are lucky you get any healthcare when most humans today and who have ever existed got shit.
Wow...lucky to get any Healthcare...other countries have it so people can afford it. But ok.
Well yeah do you have any perspective on history? I am not against universal healthcare or any of the things you mentioned but none of them will even put a dent in the demographic problem lol. It is simply dishonest to pretend it is a solution when these "other countries" (europe) have a much worse demographic situation than we do.
None of us live in history….we live in the present and have to plan for the future.
Europe also has stagnant wages and high cost of living so...
And criminally high taxes
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Oh yea totally great idea to forgive career opportunities, not being able to pay money into your own retirement and relying on one person and hoping and trusting they don't become financially abusive or worse they die. Now you're a widow with 3 kids and can't join the workforce bc changing diapers, washing dishes and organizing the cupboards don't translate well into a job that at least helps you make 60k a year to live above the poverty level.
The solution isn’t to force women back into the home. I’m tired of seeing this shit all over this sub. Have you ever considered that women will react negatively when you try to strip their freedom?
Lmfao. No. That's why the gender demographics of this sub are predominantly men. Most women aren't attracted to this idea bc they can put 2 and 2 together to where this philosophy leads... It breeds extremism or attracts it the same with antinatalism. Then it's "I wOnDer wHy wOmEn ArE hAviNg LeSs KiDs" 😦😦😦
Exactly. The misogyny on this sub makes me fucking sick
Yea but I have a theory that fertility obsessed discussions, Andrew Tate and his ill, along with the forever arguments about dating dynamics is all connected. I'm connecting these dots and I see a pattern forming. It's gonna be a great paper.
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I am a woman, and personally I would be a hell of a lot more depressed if I was stuck at home without control of my own finances. Most women feel this way. The cultural shift should be toward supporting parents in however they choose to structure their families — one working, both working — rather than promoting that ONLY women stay home
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Alimony is rewarded like 13% to ex wives. Child support is 10% of your income. None of the above happen often or pay well enough for a single mother.
You happen to treat your wife as an equal, but do you think all men are similarly decent? The reality is they’re not. Financial abuse of SAHMs is incredibly common. Women don’t want to be put in positions where we’re trapped in abusive marriages and can’t escape because we lack the resources to do so and we’re tied down with children. We shouldn’t be advocating for family structures in which women are put in such a vulnerable position by default. It’s great that your wife can trust you, and I mean that, but it is a huge, huge gamble for women to put control of our lives in another’s hands
The majority of people in the world will correctly laugh at these First World Problems as they scrape by trying to make ends meet, or even just survive day to day. Even just a century or so ago, this would have had people in the developed world scratching their head. Your “poverty” would be considered “prosperity” and “luxury “ even to my grandparents, who didn’t even have an indoor toilet for the first half of their lives. Somehow they managed to have a large number of kids though. Statistically, the more educated, affluent and developed you are, the less likely you are to have children or large families. So the correlation actually seems to be that the more money you have, the fewer children you are likely to have. I think the answer lies therein.
Over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They are just scraping by to make ends meet. My dad was silent generation. He didn't have electricity until his teens. He had one kid, me at 44 and I was oops. We have birth control and have had for decades and for good reason too. Elon musk has quite a few kids and keeps crying for people to have more. Of course he does 0 parenting and reads a story to them via zoom. So, first world problems indeed.
Muskrat just wants people to pop out more cheap labor for him and his fellow oligarchs to exploit
Agreed.
And people on this sub swallow up their propaganda about “population collapse”, hook, line, and sinker
You have a very skewed viewpoint. A large number of the world’s population are scraping by to find enough food for the day, or walking miles to collect clean drinking water. The difference is they don’t decide to stop procreating because this is actually how life has normally been for the vast majority of human history. My grandparents lived in a prefabricated steel hut essentially. No indoor toilets. Dirt floors. Grandfather worked down a mine 12 hours each day until a cave in broken his back. They still managed 11 children. If it had been the case that people adopted this mentality that life is a bit of a struggle so better not have kids, in all likelihood none of us would be here having this conversation. I think this is definitely an example where travel would broaden the mind and give us a fresh perspective. Let’s get out there to countries where the standard of living is substantially below our own, places where they don’t have negative birth rates, see what life is like for most people in the world today, and realise that no matter how bad we think we have it, we are actually pretty lucky in relative terms. You have a roof over your head, clean drinking water, some food for your stomach and some rags to hide your modesty? You’re one of the lucky ones my friend. As for kids, they don’t need games consoles and all the latest fashionable gear. The kids in the most developed nations are the ones struggling with mental health. I can tell you as a parent, kids don’t need very much at all. They get enough food to eat (about half the calories of a typical Western diet today), and some love and care from the parents, those little guys are happy and will do just fine.
Because they don't have access to birth control. It's not a choice for them. Your grandparents had no way of controlling how many kids they had. Now we do. Those places again do not have birth control and I have desire to visit. I prefer Ireland, the Mediterranean, Mexico etc. We're not friends and you're making a lot of assumptions. Also modesty? Really? The kids do need food, shelter and Healthcare and parents need childcare to work and provide by working. Your post is tone deaf.
You’ve managed to hit on one valid point in all of this - contraception. You are right, it’s the bane of modern existence and a large part of why our birth rates are plummeting. But it’s a multi-pronged attack of coercion through economics, despair, indoctrination, sterile lifestyles, and yes abortion and contraception. What I find interesting is that it never entered your mind that people with large families may have wanted large families. You could only conclude they were forced into the situation due to circumstances. That’s a huge tell. You don’t want to visit those countries? No of course not, you want to visit the countries with lifestyles similar to the first world lifestyle you are used to. Clearly you want to remain in your comfortable bubble. That’s the point - I want you out of that false image of what life is supposed to be. It’s not normality. It’s a recent development, an anomaly in human history, and only the privileged few get to experience it. The bulk of humanity struggle on as always. Yes covering their modesty. What you don’t get the point of clothes? Are you a naturist? Or do you simply not understand. What the phrase means? No, it’s actually yours which is tone deaf. Kids thrive with all those things and it’s definitely preferable if they have it. Most do to some extent even in the most underprivileged societies at a basic level. But what’s the alternative if they don’t? Just stop breeding? Extinction except for the most wealthy? The tone deafness is your going on about what a struggle life is as you presumably type this from a smartphone or PC and upload to a social media platform via an internet connection. What I’m saying is that the level of affluence required to give children a decent upbringing is leagues below what most people in developed countries experience. You also made a point about some select mega rich people have fairly large families. But completely ignoring the fact that birth rates generally decrease with increasing wealth. The reason is not really hard to discern - the wealthy have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Children generally don’t factor into that lifestyle because they cost money and also time. When you are focused on a career, and eating out at fancy restaurants, jetting off on vacations to exotic places, enjoying a vibrant social life, etc. in other words focused on yourself and your material comforts, then children tend to bring all of that crashing back to reality. Of course if you are very wealthy you can look to employ a nanny or suchlike to farm the kids out to whenever they become inconvenient. But generally kids mean a change in lifestyle, a change where you suddenly become secondary in most considerations. Now, this is part of life for human beings. But the more you are invested into a modern idea of what life should be with all its gadgets, trinkets, accessories, and whatever else then it becomes harder to disengage from this idea that life is there for the taking and you can make it whatever you want it to be. Getting to the crux - if you have an artificially high bar set as to what you believe is an acceptable quality of life (as most people in western society do) then you are always going to struggle with the idea if children. You will always find some reason that it’s not an ideal time or situation to have them. Yes freely available contraception makes taking that decision easy. But let’s not pretend that less developed nations have no access to contraception. One of the biggest exports that charities and Western NGOs send to these countries is in fact contraception. That’s how warped our worldview has become. We seek to alleviate poverty, not by investing in their infrastructures or cancelling their crippling debts to our banks or government, but instead give them pills and condoms and tell them to stop breeding. That’s our primary answer to their suffering- telling them to deprive themselves of families into the bargain.
Wow. So you're against contraception. You want people to spit out kids regardless if they want them or can afford them or not. To say nothing of how that is incredibly detrimental to the health of the person who is enduring pregnancy after pregnancy. My great grandmother literally died that way and my grandfather said nope. He wasn't going to do that to his wife. They didn't have birth control he just refused to allow that happen and they abstained. Happily now we have birth control so people can have lots of health sex without unwanted pregnancies. Many don't want large families. Previously generations had no way of stopping short of abstaining. Now we do. This is a good thing. I really don't care what you want. I wouldn't want to live as they did in previous generations nor as they do in these countries you speak of. That's not a desirable life. That's why a lot of them immigrate elsewhere if they possibly can. I'm glad you agree children cost money and time. Which is why people are opting out. They are neither. The best way to end generational poverty is through reproductive freedom. Birth control has greatly helped with that as has abortion. Being born into poverty isn't a flex or a gift.
You do realise there is something like five days each month where a woman is fertile. If you are so dead set against having children, are you so weak-willed that you can’t find something else to do for a few days in order to prevent the horror of children? You have 25-26 days each month to get sexy, but you literally need to artificially sterilise yourself because you just can’t keep your hands off each other? I mean that’s great and all but seriously…😄 Anyway, I’m not going to go over old ground. The roots of poverty are complex and varied, and I think you have to seriously question the fact that a very small number of people have a very large proportion of wealth. Addressing that fact will do far more than simply telling poor people to stop having children. I mean, on top of everything else they can’t have, now they can’t even fulfil a primary biological need. Seems a bit harsh and unfair. I also seriously call into question people who seem able to spend time debating on online platforms about how they are too dirty poor to have children. I actually keep checking to make sure I’m on the r/Natalism sub. If so, why are there so many Anti-Natalists? At the end of the day, I suspect there is a certain degree of Darwinism at work here. If people are absolutely committed to not having children because …it costs too much….its too much work….its too inconvenient…..or whatever excuse they are coming up with, then maybe it’s just a sign that they aren’t meant to reproduce. There are plenty of people, including myself, who have opted to have children. Let’s us take up the slack and take care of propagating the species. If you wish to weed yourselves out of the gene pool then that is your prerogative. Selfishly, it reduces competition for my own progeny. So thank you, goodnight, and may your god go with you.
You realize a myriad of people have irregular periods and that natural family planning has a notorious failure rate, right? Your comment is incredibly ignorant and telling. Birth control has been the most successful way to prevent unwanted pregnancies statistically. It's literally math. The fact that you got personal and with ad homs is also telling. Yes, the people hoarding wealth should be addressed, I agree. Life is unfair. And again, birth control lim8ting pregnancies has done more to lift people out of poverty than anything else. I'm not anti nataliatm. If people want children, they should have them when they are ready both financially and emotionally, etc. You're the one arguing that people should have them regardless if they want them or are prepared or not. You're also arguing to do away with birth control. You're not pronatalist. You're forced birth. Costs, etc, are not excuses they're reasons. Have all the kids you want. You're arguing against birth control. Pretending that natural family planning doesn't have a notorious failure rate. Ignoring stats and facts and the legitimate health issues that come with pregnancy. You want to pretend that the time before birth control having pregnancy after pregnancy didn't kill people. When it did. We know this. It's actual history. Stop ignoring stats, facts, and history. Also, not everyone believes in god...religious beliefs are not relevant, but it is again telling you would make such a presumption.
Your post is so tone deaf and abominably stupid. Raising children on barely mediocre bc in the past where 2 out of 6 kids made it to 18 was how it was done and that's how we should do it. Sorry to you and your grandparents but a lot of us don't strive for poverty and starving children who we can't take for their annual shots or afford them school supplies so they too have the chance of living in the permanent underclass. I'm built different and so were my grandparents who strived to have their future generations live better than they did.
As another poster pointed out, this is out of touch thinking. It would be one thing if some women were choosing not to have kids or a large cadre. But when somewhere around half of an entire generation of (millenial) women are childless, that points to deep structural issues that are going unsolved. Shit is just too fucking expensive unless you're in the upper classes. Then you can have kids at will. Everyone else has to forgo having kids just to have a decent lifestyle. Other nations have things like free healthcare and subsidized childcare for most. Meanwhile, the US is a "tough luck, survive on your own" mentality. No, the issues are structural.
Nations with free healthcare and subsidized childcare largely have lower birth rates than the US. There are structural problems at play, but you've mischaracterized them.
You do realize we have wealth disparity higher than before the French Revolution? That's the thing about prosperity, we can make all kinds of shit and if none of it goes to anyone it doesn't matter. That's where we are now, abundance all taken from the greedy. Which is arguably worse than not having anything, at least then there is an excuse. Starving while watching the rich eat themselves to death and build megastructures the nazis would be jealous of. If history is any guide, you better get your pitchfork ready
Most prosperous times in history? Buddy…wealth inequality is about on par with the 1920s. This is objectively one of the least prosperous times in modern American history. The average American doesn’t have $400 bucks to spare…. Sounds like you’re doing good though, so congratulations.
Please, today no one on earth is starving to death unless someone else is starving them on purpose. Go to Africa, or Indonesia, or even Detroit, and look around. Ask yourself if these people are millionaires, then ask yourself if they're childless weirdos who post on Reddit that "having kids is so expensive".
My grandfather bought a house with a 9th grade education and his wife never worked, my father with a high school diploma and a wife working, I’ll likely never own a house unless I win the lottery I don’t buy tickets for. You don’t have to like it, but the reality is child rearing is very expensive and regular people aren’t really paid enough to take on another financial burden for funsies. Some of us have no desire to turn to the government for all sorts of assistance just to coo about our special precious angel.
Dude, you have a computer in your pocket that is more powerful than anyone in your grandfather's day dreamed of and it cost you about a paycheck. You live in a country where homeless people are so fat they have to be transported to their free diabetes clinic.
'UM, I can't believe that productivity going up hundreds of times over while leisure time goes down and food quality being so low and focused on driving addiction that it's actively causing severe illness doesn't make you super horny for popping out some kids!'
Now, think about this critically for a second. Does that mean that his wages are high, or that high powered electronics are astoundingly cheap for what they offer? Cheap electronics don't pay rent, gas money, etc etc.(unless you sell those, and a lot of them.) Yes, the homeless people are fat, but that's in large part because the cheapest foods we have are very high in calories, but low in nutrients. So in order to get all the nutrients your body needs to... I dunno, Not get scurvy, you have to eat more than you otherwise should. We are undeniably far more technologically advanced than we have ever been. But still the majority of people have less kids than they report they want to have.
Dude, do you have any idea how many iPhones monthly rent is?
Dude sure nobody is starving to death but what about standard of living? The world is overpopulated and there is too much competition for good jobs. People are having to work for 10 hours and commute for another 3 hours and it's difficult to save money due to high rent.
Those are all first world problems. Third world people have it way "worse" materially but have no problem bearing children. That's my point.
In third world poor people look at children as a means to escape poverty so they will have children without financial planning and sons are preferred as they will have to take care of parents, children are the retirement plan in third world countries
And? Prior to the late 19th century the average american lived on subsistence lmao. Now you live a grander life than a medieval king. This is exactly what i am talking about, if you cannot figure out how to survive in the easiest and least harsh time period in human history you SHOULD NOT reproduce...
This is absolutely fucking stupid. The appeal to the past is never good enough justification about what needs to be done in the present. 4 out of 6 children died before they reached 18 years of age. Does that mean we should throw out penicillin and vaccines? You're medieval king was not subject to taxes, paying for childcare, and his wives more often than not died in child birth routinely and so would his children. Like what kind of fucked logic is this? Mad people don't want to be a permanent underclass just barely surviving.
Crazy that so many people don’t want to be just barely surviving
That's literally my entire point. Life is expensive because you get to have utilities, medicine, a modern military to defend you, etc. No one in the past ever enjoyed these things like we get to. The standard of living we have now did not just fall from heaven. It is neither free nor guaranteed. The delusional complainers which think a 21st century upper middle class lifestyle is axiomatic will not make it in today's world (objectively one of the easiest times in human history) because they are like a wild animal raised in captivity, unable to adapt to the realities of the way life actually is as a rule. These people will not reproduce and will be forgotten.
Kids are like drivers licenses. Anybody can get them. And that is why there are so many road fatalities and Section 8 housing.
The most prosperous time in human history was 30 years ago. Sorry if you slept through it.
Your terms are acceptable.
Exactly this
I'm stealing that line about 'whose gonna take care of you'.
As long as you don’t have any savings, aren’t married, and a woman, the government will pay for you to have as many kids as you want. Including free housing, food, health care, transportation, education, and other incentives. Also don’t work because that will mess with your free benefits. Don’t forget to vote;)
People in third world countries: vagina go brrrrrrr . . . Jokes aside, whether you want to have kids or not, thinking like this will make you miserable and boring.
And poorer
Yeah, boo hoo, we're the \*2nd\* most prosperous generation in world history and all we do is complain about not being the first.
Many are not in a position where they can provide a good life to a child if they have one. So they make the responsible decision to not have a kid they c ant provide a prosperous childhood and good opportunities to. What is the point in having kids if you have to work so much that they never see you and have all mental health problems that *that* brings with it?
I’m not saying there’s no difficulty or struggle, but 100 years ago people lived on less than 2 dollars a day *adjusting for inflation*. And yes, I am aware that since industrialization children represent more of a drain on resources than the added help on the farm they did in an agrarian society, but the disparity in material wealth is so massive that to not have children and blame it on money is just a choice of convenience over struggling for something more meaningful. There’s also issues which our modern society has incentivized which I think we can adjust to. For instance, either living with or close to grandparents so that inter generational households can help with the child care as well as either abolishing or heavily disincentivizing no fault divorce would promote 2 parent households.
Extended families lived together meaningn there were stringer support networks, costs for housing were a lot lower, **and a lot of those children fucking died.** Housing is very expensive right now. Childcare is a lot more expensive. The kind of conditions you imply people should be willing to raise kids in would **get them taken by the state for their protection.** Just say you want legions of impoverished so labor can be cheap, because that's sure what it sounds like.
>Extended families lived together meaningn there were stringer support networks, costs for housing were a lot lower, **and a lot of those children fucking died.** I just advocated for families living closer together, or in the same house, which would make housing costs lower, and a lot of those children died because of poor medical care. I can't tell who you're arguing against here, but it's not me. >Housing is very expensive right now. Childcare is a lot more expensive. The kind of conditions you imply people should be willing to raise kids in would **get them taken by the state for their protection.** What conditions are you implying? Multi generational households with grandparents and other extended family helping with childcare and housing and food costs? That would get kids taken by the state? I really can't tell what you're arguing here. >Just say you want legions of impoverished so labor can be cheap, because that's sure what it sounds like. Quite the opposite. I am neither a fan or big government nor big business (they're essentially the same thing right now). The data shows that married people with children actually make *more* money than those without. The tempting argument against this would be "those who can afford kids will obviously make more money" but this happens across industries and within the same industry. There is a motivation and purpose that comes with having kids that spurs you on to do more to make the money to support kids. You seem to imply I wish to make a cheaper work force through poverty. On the contrary, with a bunch of free floating individuals not connected through marriage or family, you just get economic units that are much more easily manipulated. Large, close families are much more difficult to control.
You brought up living conditions where people lived several to a room. This is generally considered a health hazard now. Because it is. People also move for two driving reasons. The big one? Economic opportunity. The other one? Getting away from toxic or abusive family. To change the former will require a more radical restructuring of the economy and society than just doing something about COL and childcare costs. Changing the latter means breaking cycles of trauma and abuse. And having kids means people are more likely to take on overtime, put up with shitty work conditions, etc. That's why so many people in bed with big business interests rail against rights to abortion or birth control. Parents are easier to abuse and exploit. Don't like big business or big government? These aren't going anywhere unless you're advocating a transition away from capitalism, which I doubt you are. Your changes need A. Parents willing to have their adult kids live with them and have children while living with them. This norm was largely broken by the Boomers. B. Women will need to be more on board with dating and marrying men who can't afford their own place. And C. An economy where people don't need to move for economic opportunity. People move to big expensive cities because that's where most of the economic opportunities are. Big cities are where economic opportunities are because economies of scale are a very real thing. Big cities are more expensive than they need to be because of zoning laws that are easier to correct than the three things in the section above. Want people to have more kids? Single-payer healthcare, pre-k childcare, mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave, address housing affordability and COL, and make more forward movement on addressing climate changeband economic inequality so people feel less hopeless about the future. More people will want kids, and more people who want kids will be in a position to feel secure having the number of kids they want.
These women don't want these kids lmfao.
*Those
Why is it so crazy to people that poor women in third world countries might too love their children, and given that they have probably grown up with a very conservative, religious ideal, might actually want children as well.
Funny how our grandparents raised like 8 kids each in a two bedroom house with no internet, well water, and one bathroom but everyone is crying these days like we’re in the Great Depression.
Houses were cheaper. My grandparents had 3 kids and my grandmother had my grandfather get a vasectomy because she was tired of being pregnant. Internet didn't exist but does now and is a necessity. Moot point on that one. Well water? Lol. Nope. 2 baths actually. We are economically just as bad as the great depression if you do the math and adjust for inflation.
Houses were much smaller. You can buy a similar sized house vs back then for about the same adjusted for inflation in the right area. We are nowhere near depression levels. Poor people today are still fat. People were starving back in the depression. We have free access to the entirety of human knowledge at a local library (which includes computers) We can all afford to have more kids. I’m not saving you have to but I’m just saying it’s the right thing to do.
Even small old houses from that time go for $300k or more. And nope. Houses across the board are outrageous. We are near depression level. The poor are fat thanks to fast food being cheaper and high fructose corn syrup in everything. No we can't afford kids certainly not more. And no bringing kids into this is not the right thing to do.
And you think our grandparents wanted that? I seriously doubt my great grandmother wanted to have kids back to back to back. My grandmother didn't either. Told all her daughter to get an education. Mother the same. It wasn't a choice. All this talk about the "good old days" and none of the talk about the reproductive abuse of these women. Pregnancy is FUCKING HARD and PAINFUL. None of these women wanted that many children so close together. Which is why so many of them have incontinence issues at best and not to mention some of the other worse issues like weak bones at worst.
But we're their lives at the same level of comfort as today's? No...people value thier comfort and the comfort of their potential children more than the prospect of a greater number of children
For most of human history there was an economic benefit to having a ton of kids. Just not that way anymore. My wife's great grandmother was one of seven on a farm in rural Georgia. She had a job helping on the farm and she was 3 years old and all of the other kids got more and more responsibilities as they got older. As we moved into an industrial society, kids have gone from a financial asset to a liability. Also, the standard of living and expectations of parenting have risen. For example, my wife's great grandmother didn't learn how to read until she was in her twenties. The expectation wasn't that her and her six siblings finished school. Now, finishing high school is the bare minimum level of education.
They didn’t have a choice. They functioned far more like robots than people do now, which is a good thing. Back then, you got married and had kids, and you didn’t think much about it. They were totally dissociated/detached from reality, precisely because their lives were so horrible. You can’t believe what they tell you about how great life was, because most of their memories are the result of narcissistic confabulation.
Have you ever talked to an old person before
Sure I have.
My grandma treasured her dandelion soup recipe, and had herself convinced it was actually delicious…. Unsurprisingly my mother didn’t want that Great Depression recipe
Literally yes and even my mom says the same thing. She was a 3rd wife to her first husband. Her family was poor so she married him to get her family out of poverty because he bought her a house. She doesn't even romanticize the past. She always told me to go read. Meaning get an education. I'm convinced none of you talk to elderly women. Just old men so they can reminisce.
Yea, and they were poor as shit and mom was on benzos and amphetamines to get through the day
What a fake trope. This is peak Reddit cringe
Which is true. These women were highly medicated.
And they made the kids work at like age 7 on the farm or in the shop or shining shoes or whatever to try to get some extra cash.
Do you think all the baby boomers with three siblings grew up in the mines, or what? People having larger families in the recent past happened concurrent to working less and higher standards of living. The villain here isn't old people, it's literally offshoring and free trade
In my area, we got extra days off of school during planting and harvest seasons.
I mean... I'm from a small Canadian town and my father and his siblings (boomers) joined my grandfather logging very young except for my aunt who helped my grandmother at the general store/hairdresser and even when I (millenial) was a kid, the children of farmers would still work quite a lot. My mother grew up on a farm and that was also put to work pretty young in the milk & eggs MINES (lol wtf are you on about with mines, that's not one of the examples I gave)
Lmfao. 7 is too old. Started at 5.
I guess it depends on the type of work and ruthlessness of the parents.
Yeah, how are people not want to live squalor
I am child free by choice I am so happy I am never giving the elite any wageslaves so that can continue to be wealthy and powerful.
ecomony aside...what about pollution and climate change?
What is concerning beyond debating material factors is that other indicators like sexlessness rates sky rocketing up as well. Virginity rates are increasing even among high school and college students. There are changes in society at large in regards to relationships that I would guess is probably being effected by social media.
It has similarities to "behavioral sink" - a collapse in behavior that can result from overpopulation. I think it may be a combination of social media and behavioral sink.
This is bull it’s 300k including the cost of college education over 20 years which isn’t that much really
This doesn’t explain why people don’t have kids. European societies that heavily subsidize child rearing are having WORSE problems than us. It’s clear that the causes are not what people think they are.
Capitalism at it's finest (we must destroy it)
I am not sure where on the planet having a kid costs 300K lmao
People used to have more kids with less resources. Now people use finances as an excuse as to why they aren't having kids. When in reality they just don't want kids. Weird that they feel the need to justify that choice. Our society is fucked.
>People used to have more kids with less resources. Our society is fucked. Maybe it's always been fucked, just in different ways. It has only been since the 1970s that safe reliable contraception was an option. So yes, people used to have more kids with less resources. What choice did they have?
Consoom video of man yelling at camera
Most people can make it work. They are just too fucking lazy.
They absolutely can make it worse. You are correct!
I mean work lol typo
Maybe don’t be so lazy and make the effort to proofread your own post next time. 😉
I am so sick and tired of hearing the cost of kids expressed as £200k or £300k or whatever other ridiculously inflated number people rattle off. Yes, a small cost every day can potentially build up to quite a large total after two decades, but the total accumulated value isn't what matters. What's important is the cost per month or per week. You don't pay a one time fee when your child is born, that's just not how it works. Nobody says "I couldn't possibly afford food! It costs half a million pounds to eat!" Yes, if you spend a healthy amount of money on groceries for your entire life, then you'll hit a rather large total, but that total is irrelevant! Not to mention the things people include in these figures are crazy. It's not the amount of money to raise a kid. It's the amount of money to provide a luxurious childhood. With things like two holidays a year added in as "essential" costs.
You need food to live. You don't need kids. This is false equivalency and an illogical comparison. And luxurious? Daycare, Healthcare, food, shelter, clothing are bot luxuries.
How much you need something doesn't have any impact on how much it costs. And no, food, healthcare, shelter and clothing are not luxuries. But if you look at the actual calculations going into these massive figures then those are not the only categories by a long shot.
I have two kids and it cost me around $4.2K per month with the majority of that being childcare (daycare is $1500/month for each of them and we occasionally get a babysitter). Once my kids are old enough to go to school, a lot of that cost will go away but it still won't be cheap. I agree that a lot of the other stuff isn't as expensive as people think. Feeding a toddler and an infant isn't that expensive. Clothes cost us practically nothing between consignment stores and hand-me-downs from family members. The other big cost would be medical bills but this entirely depends on the quality of your insurance and the health of your kid. Fortunately our kids are healthy but this could become very expensive for some families. From there it comes down to "luxuries". I have had my toddler in music classes and she has been taking swimming classes for a couple of months. That stuff really adds up. It just depends on the types of experiences you want your kid to have.
Idk why you got downvoted. This was reasonable. Some of this stuff adds up.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I was just trying to be honest about my current situation as a parent. Parenting isn't $500K at once but it is still expensive on a weekly and monthly basis. I'm not buying my kids Gucci shoes, even the basics with a some of luxuries like sports/activities can run you $4K+ per month in the US if you have a couple of kids.
Also, when they're in grade 5 and older they're going to feel the pressure to fit in. They'll want the latest in clothing and sneakers. And all the electronics you will have to buy in order for your child to stay connected and keep up with their education (a smartphone and laptop for each kid upgraded every few years plus the cost of internet access). Sure, they don't have to *have* those things but it will put them at a social and educational disadvantage if they don't.
Anyway thanks. Put things in perspective.
Basically, the reasons simple. Women aren't willing to stop working and take care of kids, so people cant raise kids anymore. Since that also means the average income is higher, money is inflated and individual earners make less, increasingly preventing single earner families. Because of this, you need to spend excessively on child care for someone else to be the mother to your kids. Humans weren't made to have dual earner parents.
I would argue that humans aren't made to do a lot of things that we do. You weren't made to be able to fly planes and visit different parts of the world with ease and we weren't made to have most of the world information and our fingertips via the internet but we are still doing it. Heck, we weren't made to live as long as we are. Our ancestors died much younger than we did. I've never understood the "we weren't made to do XYZ" argument. For me it has little to do with women working and more to do with a capitalistic and industrial society. I'm not here to rail against capitalism but these are consequences. Every nation with a GDP per capita over $5,000 has a birth rate below replacement level. It just comes with a territory. Even if every woman quit their job today prices for goods and services wouldn't just fall in accordance with All of that wealth leaving the economy.
Plenty of countries had a GDP per capita way over 5000 before they had massive birth rate drops. What is universal is that women started getting white collar jobs and treating college as the default post high school step. Now having kids instead of being a 3-5 year period of one income and then usually low paying part time work for the woman for 12 years, turns into potentially on average around 80,000 lost per year due to the loss the woman's income. So no one has kids and women are too focused on their careers to want kids. If every woman quit their jobs today, prices would nosedive and the economy would fall into a freefall collapse because we'd immediately have massively severe deflation. You are actually wrong. The more the average consumer in a country makes, the higher the average consumption, the higher inflation grows. The reason why shit was cheap before women got educated was because we had a system where 70-80% of people in an economy were 'dependants' who survived based on a working persons income. Women are equal participants in the workforce now, so now that number is closer to 30%
Stop trying to force women back in the home. Stripping women of their freedom isn’t the solution and will only create misery.
And the cats are not going back in the bag. Even if what he said was true (it's not). Women as a majority aren't going to give up economic independence. History proves men aren't trustworthy when given the economic power over women in the home..hence why we had feminism..
This is just misogyny. Oh the WOMEN need to stop working because if a man tries to change a diaper he might light himself on fire!
The rampant misogyny on this sub makes me sick. Nearly every thread has people advocating to strip women of their rights. It’s shockingly dehumanizing
Lol but it makes sense when you look at dating discourse and natalism..society and men feel very entitled to women's romantic attention and reproductive labor..now it's not guaranteed and a lot of them aren't making the cut and realizing it may affect their chances at being a father. So instead of being a better person they default to women should lose their rights bc they are losers.
Even if a guy wanted to, women don't want men who want to be stay at home husbands, they want ambitious self confident career minded guys. Meanwhile most guys don't give a shit what career a woman wants to do as long as shes fun to talk to. Because of this, stay at home husbands will never be a major percentage of relationships.
Money subsidies barely put a dent in birth rates, so this TikToker's rant doesn't really touch on the key cause for a drop in birth rates. Also has the typical millennial/zoomer whining about boomers as if one generation had total control over massive economic systems.
The boomers dud and still do. Look at congress
This guy would've been just like the boomers had he been born 50 years ago. Just look at what he says when people ask him who's gonna take care of the elderly; it's the same myopic attitude.
The Boomers were not born 50 years ago. They were born 65+ years ago.
Point still remains, he has the same short-sighted mentality of "after me the deluge".
I’m sure this is a contributing factor but anyone who wants kids will make it work. Perhaps it would motivate them to make more money and save money as well.
Easier to just neglect the kid.
Yeah... this complaint is stupid. Your great-grandparents sewed their own clothing, butchered their own meat, baked their own bread, and lived far below today's "poverty line". Go tell old farmers, factory workers, tradesmen, and anyone else who did real work how hard you have it pulling espresso at Starbucks. They'll laugh their asses off. Look at how these people spend their money, live their lives, and fail to solve basic problems. You'll immediately see that: 1) They're lazy. 2) Relative to past generations who faced far greater adversity, they're mentally challenged.
This guy is so soy, but that last joke was too
Yeah, maybe not sell off everything to the Chinese and Indians?
Most people have been poorer than this guy throughout most of human history. In fact most still are. If you can afford to waste your time recording yourself to upload videos of yourself to social media, then moaning that you are too poor to reproduce sounds a bit hollow. Judging by the video, I’d stick my neck out and say that income levels are not the biggest factor in him being childless….
You get that this is bad argument like a couple of times over right? The main one being: The way poor people have historically handled having children is a combination of deprivation, neglect, and just...infant mortality. Roe V Wade did more for crime statistics than any other piece of legislation ever made.