It’s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.
For years, some conservatives have framed the declining fertility rate of the United States as an example of eroding family values, a moral catastrophe in slow motion.
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, recently came under fire for saying in 2021 that the nation was run by “childless cat ladies” who “hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.”
Last year, Ashley St. Clair, a Fox News commentator, described childless Americans this way: “They just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts. It’s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.”
Researchers who study trends in reproductive health see a more nuanced picture. The decision to forgo having children is most likely not a sign that Americans are becoming more hedonistic, they say. For one thing, fertility rates are declining throughout the developed world.
Rather, it indicates that larger societal factors — such as rising child care costs, increasingly expensive housing and slipping optimism about the future — have made it feel more untenable to raise children in the United States.
Because children are expensive, a ton of work, and the world is dying.
Pick one or all.
Bank accounts are empty, and the air is full of smoke.
the car’s on fire
and there’s no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blowsNGL, line 3 looking more appealing every day.
We are trapped in the belly of the beast, and the beast is starving to death.
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It’s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.
Well, of course it’s not selfishness. Having children is a purely selfish act, because who else are you reproducing for? You can’t do something for someone that doesn’t exist, and bringing existence to someone who hasn’t asked for it, knowing what the world looks like, doesn’t strike me as a kindness. So who else is benefiting? The capitalist machine?
But the world really needs another little copy of me running around because I’m so unique and wonderful! /s
but i am 👁️👄👁️
Well, I mean SOME people have to reproduce at least…
The corporations need more worker meat for the grinder! How dare you selfishly keep that from them!
The mines are yearning for the children
I love how the Republicans are blaming societal causes when in reality it’s because of fucked up a economy due to businesses price gouging the fuck out of everyone while also not paying employees a living wage, not giving raises to keep up with inflation, and more economic certainty. They don’t realize that not everyone is rich like they are. lmao
They know. They want a desperate and exploitable peasantry.
Why have a child so they can grow up to fight in the water wars or die of famine during ecological collapse?
I guess they dont see the the sin of knowingly condemning someone to that life. People should only have children if they are confident they can offer them stable lives.
What about “I just don’t want one.” is that not a legitimate line of thought? That was what I based my decision on. I have never understood why the default state was marriage and then have a family. I can tell you that me and my childless wife are family.
I agree. The opening line is an insult to me. Why would choosing not to have children be selfish? Forcing someone to live a whole ass life because you want a family is the selfish thing to do, not the other way around.
Many people simply don’t understand the idea of not wanting one. I moved to a more conservative area shortly before I got married, and after I got married I got all the usual questions about kids to which I replied “lol no”. Then I was asked why I even got married. Bro, if I wanted kids, I’d have them and I don’t need to get married to do it.
Agreed, I don’t know why people don’t understand that “I don’t want one” is a completely legitimate reason to not have one by itself. Add to that any level of depth you’d like to choose from financial, climate or political reasons to there just being too many people in the world already and it further legitimizes it, but “I just don’t want one” is and should be completely valid on its own.
The main question seems to be why is the birth rate declining. Presumably people not wanting kids have existed during all times. But even if we assume that there are more people per capita who don’t want kids, the question persists, why is that the case, and how much of the decline is attributable to it.
When women were almost always home makers, children were how they’d find fulfillment. Now they can have fulfillment from working careers. At least, this is one of the main reasons I’ve heard about long standing trends in birth rate decline. They predict that the human population on earth will peak between 11 and 12 billion and kind of just stay there.
This causes panic because Capitalism demands that everything must continue to grow, eternally.
Considering we evolved to pass our genes, this is weird
I find that the people who spout so much about passing on their genes, or passing on their legacy or keeping the bloodline going. Are the people who you would least like to see pass on their genes. I find it to be the height of narcissism.
Good thing we are no longer mindless animals and have to submit to our base functions.
The future isn’t looking too good with all the rich fucks fucking the planet over. Everything is stupid expensive now, by the time you work and pay for childcare you’re better off staying at home. It’s really tough to get a house. It’s pretty depressing what has become the norm in this country thanks to the ultra rich. It’s about time to eat.
I no longer live in the US in part for reasons I wouldn’t have a child there.
- inequality increasing
- education costs increasing
- low employee protections
- ridiculous and expensive healthcare system
- few or poor social and community programs (not just social safety net but also libraries, public transit, etc.)
- environmental and other protections backsliding
Because of many of those, I left. The secondary reasons for not having my own biological kids are some medical issues I have and, by the time I was stable enough, I was already coming into my 40s. I had considered adoption, but ultimately decided not to do that, either.
weird how all those tax cuts for rich people lead to them going on real estate purchasing sprees, making housing unaffordable
Meanwhile the rest of us pay more in taxes
I bet if the billionaires shared just a bit more we could afford to have more kids and they wouldn’t be looking at their labor force drying up…
No… that couldn’t be it.
/s
There’s the option of importing cheap workforce. It has been tried before… /s
You forgot to add… While that imported labour is scared they will get deported so they don’t complain they are underpaid or taken advantage of. Just how the corporation’s want it
Can’t afford one. Jobs don’t pay enough to afford one. They’re annoying. They’re shit machines. I prefer to have fun in life and do what I like more than take care of a kid.
Yeah man, Ashley wasserface was pretty much right, aside from the drinking, statistically.
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Quite the opposite. People generally want children for selfish relations.
I’ve never understood that assumption either. Having a child is the clearly selfish choice if you’re going to choose to have this binary that one of the two is selfish.
Right? One of the two is clearly fucking selfish and its not the people that looked at the world and themselves and said “nah cant handle that”
I just downloaded the raw data from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN and ploted it in this graph for the countries I was interested in:
The USA is - according to the data - nothing special in this regard. It’s even positioned best of all the countries with the flattest downwards curve. Just look at South Korea :D
South Korea is also an interesting one because, IIRC, it’s currently in the middle of a social upheaval over the treatment of women and there is a movement to avoid dating/relationships in general amongst younger women.
Wow, what happened to South Korea? I heard it was bad but I never realized they were worse than Japan.
It’s a combination of many factors. It’s so extremely expensive to have children here because of how the society is structured and how competitive everything is. If you can’t afford to pay for after school for them to go to every day to and learn additional things they need but don’t get tought at public school, they have no chance to get into a reasonable University and end up with a shitty life.
Another thing is the huge divide between men and women which is getting worse by the day. Men are bitching that women don’t want to date and marry them while not helping with the children or house work at all. So women don’t want to deal with all this shit alone and either get married to very rich guys who can provide a easy life for them or don’t at all and concentrate on their career instead.
The government has poured in unbelievable amounts of money to try to fix it, but nothing is working so far.
I remember seeing a YouTube video that said South Korea’s culture combines the worst parts of East and West. The impossibly high standards of perfection of the East and the crass consumerism of the West, where you must have the most expensive things and look like a movie star or you’re looked down on. I don’t know how true it actually is, though.
When it comes to dating it is certainly quite true. One of the ways to get away from it is for men to find someone from a poorer Asian country and for women to also look even more west.
They’re not. Higher birth rates are not better when population levels are as high as they are.
Worldwide population is different than the population of specific areas. The country will go extinct in less than 100 years if they continue this trend.
I wonder how much of this is caused by microplastics in testicles?
Probably very little because most of them who want children can get help by modern medicine.
Oh… Well no money and general non-response to actual nazis to start
Because some people actually care about children? Instead of pretending to care and immediately abandoning that position as soon as the child is born?
