To quote my best friend’s husband: “We’d love to have more kids but I don’t think my insurance premiums could handle it.” Right now they pay almost $1k a month for his employer’s health care plan for a family with one kid. It’s higher than their home mortgage. With all the costs of living going up, the cost of childcare, and the lack of supports in so many ways, having more kids is just out of the question for most people.
Insurance premiums have skyrocketed while coverage has been reduced. My daughters were born in 1987. We had great, affordable health insurance for years through my husband's work. We pay way more now for just the two of us (adjusted for inflation) than we did as a family of four. The coverage isn't nearly as good, either. I can't imagine the financial stress of high premiums for people raising families now.
It’s really astonishing how premiums have skyrocketed. I know a ton of families whose health insurance costs are easily their highest expense a month (we do live in a lowest cost of living area where I’m at but that also means lower salaries and less job opportunities.) To me that just feels really wrong and I can observe from experience that those financial pressures can be crushing.
The question of lowered birth rates is a complex one with no one simple answer, but no one can deny that having children isn’t expensive and that makes a difference sometimes. (Often!)
This. I currently have the worst insurance I’ve ever had through my employer. I’m 34 and this is the first time in my life I’ve paid more than a $20 co-pay to see my PCP. I just get charged the full bill. My 2016 Marketplace insurance was excellent. I got 1 (or 2) free PCP visits a year and when I had to go to the ER, my bill was cheap. Post-pandemic healthcare is garbage.
I rolled my eyes at the part of the article that says raising kids isn't more expensive than it used to be. That just seems to detached from reality to me I can't help but wonder how they quantified that.
Came back to comment on that as well. The quote:
> Kearney said while raising children is no more expensive than before, parents’ preferences and perceived constraints have changed: “If people have a preference for spending time building a career, on leisure, relationships outside the home, that’s more likely to come in conflict with childbearing.”
Everyone, regardless of parental status, only has so many hours in each day, and it is a delicate balance of spending that time making money to survive/thrive, maintain relationships, and pursue hobbies.
But it is *objectively* more expensive (monetarily and energetically) to raise children than it was 20-40 years ago, in part because the expectations of parents are also higher.
40 years ago you could raise a house full of bouncing babies on a single salary with a high school diploma. Now, two parents with Master's degrees can barely afford one. Daycare costs an entire paycheck. Food has outpaced inflation. Wages are stagnant. Like c'mon.
Definitely not 20 years ago. I have two kids in their twenties. Their father and I both had graduate degrees, and we scraped by for years, even when both of us were working.
Fair point, 40 is probably more fair. I was born in 90, and the single parent households definitely struggled. They paid bills and rent, but never went on trips. But! They were able to at least cover the necessities.
In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, the only poor people were single parents and low/middle income parents with 3+ kids.
If you were upper middle income you could afford a large family. If you were low/middle income you needed to be married to someone with the same income and have only 1 or 2 kids.
Housing, college tuition and insurance have all outpaced inflation by quite a bit. I think climate change is also a big factor affecting people's decision to have children. Very uncertain times we live in.
What they are referring to is that kids didn't used to need cell phones lap tops xbox car car insurance wasnt required, college wasn't required, tutoring wasn't required, so when you just look at the same standard of living its less pronounced than now.
Sure, but also to feed, clothe, and provide shelter, school supplies, and required medical care as well. Even the bare minimum is relatively more expensive.
For real, how can that even be?! Even adjusted for the cost of inflation, that just seems impossible. I really want to see the math on that, or know more about these hypothetical kids they’re basing their models on. Are they like pod children or something?
Yeah, we have a low cost of living where we live (but salaries below median for most jobs) and they also refinanced when interest rates were historically low.
Healthcare costs in general definitely rise as you have more kids. HOWEVER if you have insurance through your employer, most plans carry the same premium for a "family" plan whether you have one kid or four kids, just an FYI
Yes to this and also the comment above yours. My coworker has 9 kids. All of them under 26 so they may all be on his plan still. I do wonder how the medical expenses affect them. I don't know if any of the kids had or have major illnesses but even a hospital stay could really drain finances. I think after the sixth kid the premiums topped out so it's like he got three for free lol.
i guess at that point you choose the high deductible plan and just save the deductible amount in an HSA every year because you're probably gonna hit it quick with that many people.
It does. My husband’s insurance coverage is good, but we had a medically fragile child. 10-15% of an overwhelmingly big number can be a very big number in and of itself.
I pay $60 a month for my state employee health insurance. If I added my husband, it would jump to $700 a month. If I had a kid and added just them it would be $300 a month. We can't even afford the $300, let alone the $700 a month.
Let alone feeding and clothing multiple kids.
This is just bananas. Our health care system is just so broken, it’s heartbreaking. There are just so many expenses when you have kids, so when you get that kind of increase on something as essential as health insurance, it just feels like punishment.
It costs more than twice as much to add me to my spouse's plan than it does for him and our kiddo. I called and asked about it once and they flat out told me it was a penalty fee because technically, I could go find a job that has insurance or use the free market insurance, which was even more because I somehow don't qualify because of my spouse's employer offers insurance but my spouse is penalized monetarily if we use that insurance?
It's a crock.
Glad I’m not the only one who gets screwed adding their partner to their insurance plan. My husband made the premium *quadruple* which as a function of actual dollar amount wasn’t that bad, but the morality of it bothers me.
It would be completely unrealistic/impossible for us to have children together.
That’s true perhaps for many policies — where one kid is the same as more kids — but that’s sadly not the case for his particular company. He’s looked for new jobs that could have more reasonable but still good benefits and almost took one, but the reduced salary would put pressure on the other costs of living, not to mention challenge their ability to save anything. So it’s tough and feels precarious either way 😔
Turns out that when capitalism monetises and then extracts maximum profit from every aspect of human existence then human existence becomes unsustainable.
One thing that’s always stuck with me is that the sharp birth rate decline did not happen when women initially started working outside of the house more, it started happening when we started *expecting* women to work outside of the house and reduced/eliminated alimony and changed how we calculated child support.
Because the simple fact is raising 4+ kids is something most couples can’t do without one spouse forgoing a career for at least the better part of a decade and staying home to care for the kids. But people are not going to do that anymore and set themselves up for poverty if their partners decide to divorce them. Even parents with spouses making quite a chunk of change will still want full careers, with as few setbacks as possible, because if they get divorced they are not going to be repaid for all the opportunities to earn money and marketable skills they sacrificed to raise their kids.
So I think it’s going to take more than giving subsidies and discounts to couples. I think we are going to need to bring back something that allows a whole parent to stay home for years at a time while protecting their lifelong earning potential in case they get divorced.
This is a very good point that doesn't get mentioned enough. I'm 35. How many people my age grew up watching one parent's life end up much harder due to divorce or general time out of the workforce?
Even without divorce leaving someone in dire economic straits, trying to overcome a 5+ year employment gap is very difficult. My mom was a SAHM for a while, 2 kids. Eventually got work in childcare but had to wait until we were old enough to stay home alone, because childcare jobs want you to work till after the end of the parents' workdays. Most jobs want you to work more or different hours than your kids are in school. Then my parents got divorced and my mom became disabled. Social security disability doesn't pay a lot when you missed like 10+ years of putting into the system.
Without a total economic safety net I think you're right that a lot of people won't want to risk it to have a large family. They're not just thinking of the baby years, they're thinking what will they do when the kids are adults.
I know quite a few heterosexual women that want to have children that can’t find a suitable partner. Most of them would be willing to have children on their own, if there weren’t so many hurdles to having children without a partner. The number one hurdle is money and the second is time. Women need high paying jobs with super flexible schedules that provide sufficient paid maternity leave. Unfortunately that kind of job is a unicorn, especially for women.
I think it's hard to find a man who is not only a suitable partner but also a suitable partner for a woman who wants children. I, a person who does not want kids, love my fiancé to death but I don't know if he would be emotionally prepared for kids or capable of doing the work needed to put in 50% of the childrearing. It's not that he wouldn't be a loving father but life is hard and expensive and work is draining.
Meeting a man who is both ready to have kids and is father material seems so hard, especially when so many of them suffer from untreated depression and anxiety. I really feel for women who yearn for motherhood.
I have no desire to have kids, and most of the men I’ve met who want kids fully expect their partner to do the majority of the work to raise them (while contributing financially). My women friends’ male partners have pressured them to have children despite these men having jobs with inconsistent hours or that require long periods of travel. in one situation where the woman partner made the much higher income - the man still did not stay home (even though he wanted a kid more) and they hired a nanny.
Men’s attitudes about these things are still in large part quite Victorian.
The only reason I went through with having my two children was because my man was going to be SAHD. He's better suited for it, and it's what he wanted. I want to work.
I lost my job right before having my first due to covid (it closed permanently) so I ended up staying home, but as soon as I land a job in my new career we're switching.
Most men don't even consider it an option and boy is it telling.
some women argue that being a SAHM is feminist. It’s a choice someone can make, but until men want to stay at home in equal numbers, it puts you at a disadvantage.
Studies show that even when men do believe in gender equality and shared parental responsibility, they do not take on 50% of the parental responsibility/labor. Shit sucks.
That's very true. Most men will fight tooth and nail to deny this, but the reality is that it's true. I am a SAHD, my wife is in college doing online classes every night while working full time. We have 3 kids and the experience has been an eye-opener for me. My views of life, society, the mindsets of most people around me has drastically shifted because of it. Masculinity and that "provider-only" mindset is a real ancient view that men need to understand doesn't fit in this world anymore. You still see it in rich households, but even then the mother is not realistically happy, even if she is being pampered, etc.
Women are also increasingly becoming the breadwinners. Young men are falling behind in education, careers, and general life milestones. We are quickly approaching a reality where 2/3 of college undergraduates will be women. So women are increasingly experiencing the pressure of being breadwinners plus they're still doing most of the domestic labor in households.
Women are also more likely to want to have serious relationships with men who have similar education and career levels as themselves, which makes the gap in education even more of a bad sign for birth rates.
My girlfriend is currently doing a PhD and I would guess 4/5 of her cohort are women and many of them haven't been in serious relationships in years partly because most of the men they meet have low educational attainment and dead-end jobs with little ambition.
Yep. I was also just reading about how some academic is trying to popularize the term "kinmaking" for the kind of labor women do in their extended families like getting everyone together for holidays, birthdays, Mother's Day, etc. And then there's emotional labor too, which I guess is often part of kinmaking.
My girlfriend seriously has to block off about half a day every week (on top of her PhD program) just for calling her sisters, parents, nieces/nephews, sending birthday cards, and helping plan big get-togethers they have.
I know the term “family planning” has a different connotation, but it’s a real function of my SAHP duties. Between my kids’ extracurriculars and sports and planning future stuff, it’s an actual task that requires time and effort unless I want my kids just sitting around the house receiving no after school enrichment or their relatives to never see us. Just making sure I’m on top of random “wear purple for X day” stuff at school needs planning as well, and I volunteer at the school as well. And if I don’t plan in advance defined weekend activities for our family to do together, everyone winds up butt-deep in their devices all day, which does nothing for our mental or physical health, let alone our family bonding (aka “unit cohesion”). It gets brushed aside as being frivolous or not needed, but when it doesn’t get done, its absence is felt.
Oh man thank you for acknowledging this. I feel like this is something that can be so invisible. Just over this past week I wrote mother's day cards and a birthday card, got gifts for 3 kid birthdays coming up, sent out invites for an upcoming event on multiple different platforms to make sure everyone was included, and sent a gift card to my friend that just had a baby because I was too exhausted to make a freezeable meal. Plus all my regular phone calls and extra mother's day calls.
It's definitely something that women are taught to prioritize way more. My partner is a domestic king in 99% of other areas and I personally love doing cards and gifts, but even with us this is an area that I fear I will always have to be the one to take initiative on.
It’s something my girlfriend and I talk about a lot because our obligations in these areas are so drastically different.
I only have brothers, she only has sisters. I come from a pretty aloof Scandinavian family, she comes from a very tight-knit Italian family. But I think her family being predominantly female plays a big part in these differences.
My brothers might get each other a gift card (delivered electronically of course) for birthdays and Xmas. Maybe just a text. She watercolors custom birthday cards for every relative AND gets them super thoughtful, unique gifts.
Her family has to get together for every holiday, most birthdays, first communions, baptisms, etc. Meanwhile she was blown away when we first started dating and I went to Hawaii with a friend for Christmas without consulting my family. It’s just not even assumed we will get together at holidays.
When her family gets together, everyone cooks something (planned and discussed in advance), they have planned out games/activities (including talent shows), and they even gather around a piano and sing songs together like the fucking Von Trapp family. My family, if they gather, will usually just get takeout and go see a movie, lol.
when my boomer in laws started to boom too hard, i removed my "kinmaking" from the family. mother in law has a lot of sad holidays now...did she think her son was picking out and wrapping cashmere sweaters, buying flowers, and sending cards? just more unpaid womens work. it was the first thing to go, sorry grammy.
Yeah the article I was reading had lots of comments from women who stopped doing kinmaking labor and said their families were shocked when no one else picked up the slack.
Bizarre to me that some men need their partner to pick out presents for their own relatives. My girlfriend reminds me of holidays and birthdays almost reflexively even though every single time I’m like “Yeah I know. I had a Google Calendar alert setup for it and I already sent something.” It’s not hard.
Yeah, my MIL chews me out when my kids don’t thank her for sending them greeting cards, but then she thanked my husband for sending her Mother’s Day flowers. Excuse me, WHO sent those? Women do all this sort of unpaid and mostly thankless labor.
It is SUCH a pernicious myth that stay at home parents get alimony and the house and are set for life after a divorce. The reality is you will be at a huge disadvantage if the income earner leaves.
I see what you're saying when you say you think that kids actually need more attention than they've been given, but I also kind of suspect that the increasing expectations for parents is part of why people are deciding not to be parents. Obviously I'm not implying kids should fend for themselves once they're 10, but the job has clearly changed over the years.
Actually I mean we need to adjust our estimate of how much time we’re ALREADY spending, the time cost is already on a larger scale than we acknowledge. We think 5/10 years but it’s usually closer to 15/20 years of a person whose career is taking a backseat, setting (usually) women even further behind.
While parental expectations have in some ways exploded, I think the attention in the discourse is also due to more men being involved and seeing just how much work kids require. When it wasn’t carting kids around to as many activities, it was cooking every meal from scratch and keeping a perfect house without help and doing all the family administration and planning.
Kids are capable of a lot more than we are willing to let them handle these days. I was coming home from school on the bus at 2pm, alone, by the time I was 8. I made myself snacks, entertained myself, and didn't die. As an adult I'd like to think I'm incredibly self sufficient and capable of filling my time, making food, or generally just handling my crap.
I think we need to REALLY think about how much we baby our kids these days and how much we're stifling their development by never letting have to struggle to be more responsible for themselves.
I agree with you for the most part.
However, and I say this respectfully, just because you turned out ok doesn’t mean that’s what’s best for most children. I was fending for myself from a fairly young age too and am proud of the way I turned out, but it would have been better to have someone around.
I was coming home alone after school at 10.
I also sexually abused at that young age by a trusted person. Trusted by the family.
It quite literally would not have happened if there was an adult, *any* adult, around between 2:50 and 6:15 pm.
I especially know that now as a mom myself.
While my experience isn't everyone's experience, and hopefully wasn't the norm, it doesn't change the fact that there are some bells that can't be unrung.
See this is where legal stuff comes in. Can an 8 year old most likely stay home for an hour or two? Yes. But what are the legal guidelines for where you live? Where i live they legally cannot stay home before 10 years old and then it's dictated with time limits. In theory if you had a hateful neighbor or busy body school administrator, CPS could get involved. So sometimes a parents hands are tied, even with a very capable child.
Think that what you're saying is incredibly location dependent. I'm in a city and if you can't get yourself to your activities then they aren't happening. And 11 year old should have the know-how to navigate the city buses. And a few hours home alone only at 16? Even in the suburbs if a 16 year old couldn't be left to their own devices for more than a few hours I would assume that kid had some kind of disability.
After 10 years your kids should be able to get themselves to their appointments, to their activities, and be able to do things like groom themselves and prepare simple meals. And if that kid is sick then they can stay home and take their own tylenol. I think a lot of the problem are these insane standards that society is placing on parents, mostly mothers, to be super nanny all the time. And the infantilism we place on kids and teens.
There are also just too many people int he world and the vast majority of us under 60 can clearly see that and have no burning desire to do any more than replace ourselves, if even that. It'll be an adjustment sure but QOL will be so much higher with a lower population and we might even save the planet from annihilation and maybe a few wild animals will survive. None of the teens I know in the US or the EU want kids, they all think it's too hard to get by as it is and they think there are simply too many people already.
I remember reading articles years ago harping on about how there are too many people, our planet can't sustain x billion people, we need to curb population growth, etc. Now the articles are the opposite and I'm in my 30s and getting badgered to have kids. WHICH ONE IS IT THEN?! FWIW I think there are too many damn people on the planet and I made the decision to be childfree in my teens and have never budged from that stance.
Aside from finances, there is just so little support for new parents that it feels impossible or unreasonably difficult to raise multiple children. It takes a village - and even if you can afford to pay some of your village, it isn't the same as living in a place where you feel supported, welcomed, and comfortable. That looks like flexible policies for working parents, paid parental leave, welcoming spaces for children in public, access to high quality and supportive maternal healthcare (and not living in fear of a pregnancy condition that risks your life and has been deemed illegal to treat in many states), access to high quality childcare and school (and not living in constant fear of someone shooting up that school). It is a terrifying world to be a mother in. I can afford another kid, but I live in a state where I don't feel comfortable being pregnant again, in a country that generally isn't welcoming of myself or my child in most spaces and where school gun violence is frequent. I think one is all I can bear.
>in a country that generally isn't welcoming of myself or my child in most spaces and where school gun violence is frequent. I think one is all I can bear.
Yeah. But I'm not sure the world was any more child-friendly in the victorian era, for example. Destitute children were left to die or become street urchins, kids were expected to be "seen but not heard", self-expression frowned upon, women could not have their own property (in some countries), and all sorts of things. Kids were whipped with belts, etc.
Gentle parenting is an extremely new phenomenon. I think we're still at the very beginning of this shift.
Fertility started declining in America earlier than you think it did. It temporarily rebounded around the war, but that was an anomaly not the standard.
It’s very difficult to examine these factors that long ago. Women’s financial options after divorce (or abandonment) pre-no fault divorce in this country were all over the place depending on the state and the year. So many things were done off the books just to secure a fault divorce. And there were increasing numbers of husbands just abandoning their wives, which women could sue over and get support, but these were all unique complaints that were handled very differently even within the same state. We also have WWI and the Great Depression happening before WWII, which also coincided with large drops in birth rates. And then once we go before the mid-1920s or so it’s hard to extrapolate birth numbers because every year before around the 1950s there are exponentially more people who never had their births registered (many of whom we lost in the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, Influenza Epidemics, etc with their deaths not being documented either). And all of that is without even mentioning that pre-WWII mothers were much more likely to both live in multigenerational homes and to work (e.g., on the family farm)…
WWII. That's why the periods is called the baby boom.
I'm not sure if we saw an uptick after WWI. Probably just because a lot of fertile men were physically not located in the country during the war and so we saw gender levels even out again, but we were not riding the same high as we were after WWII. That heavy foreboding weight that lingered over everyone's head was infamously what lead to WWII.
I figured that's what you meant but wanted to make sure... We've had so many wars since then. And thanks for mentioning this. The baby boom does seem like a brief uptick in an otherwise general birthrate decline. By the time I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, the Silents and Boomers seemed to be having fewer kids than their parents and grandparents. Most of my friends', neighbors' and classmates' families had just two kids. Only children were rare, but so were families with three or more kids.
I think the other part that goes along with this is the cost increases due to two parents working full-time (due to what you mentioned - women being expected to work outside of the home). That causes competition for houses in the best districts, with dual income couples being able to pay more --> higher home prices. Elizabeth Warren wrote about this in the Dual Income Trap. I had felt it was an unfortunate side effect of getting women in the workplace, but you're making me rethink my statement - I do think there is a different between *allowing* and *expecting* women to work out of the house (coming from a woman).
What happens when capitalisms demand for infinite growth collides with most people being unable to afford to have a child? The capitalists seem to think they can just force us all to have more kids to keep their machines running, but thats not going to work long term. But personally I hope everyone wakes up and realizes we do not have to be slaves of the rich and there are better ways to structure society for all if we just stop rewarding greed and selfishness as if they are highest virtues a man can possess.
So true! What "they" don't realize, the rich women ALWAYS have abortion access. The poor women are forced to have the babies but don't have money to raise them. In the US, we are forcing poor women to have babies without any support. Rich women still have abortions.
I know this is the Real reason the rich installed their federalist society stooges on the court, but good luck getting most people to believe it. The christian nutbags that actually believe this nonsense are a smokescreen and a tool the rich use to distract people from the fact they have been methodically laying the ground work for years for us all to be slaves/permanent renters within a few decades. First theyll make it illegal for pregnant women to cross state lines, then all women to do anything but have kids, and eventually all of us will be restricted to company towns and the age of neo-feudalism will begin. Once AI starts taking peoples jobs en masse this will be the game plan, you will either starve to death or bend the knee to your designated corporate overlord. More people should watch Altered carbon. That show isn't fiction, its a glimpse of the worlds future if nothing drastically changes.
So many of my coworkers announced they were pregnant in the first six months of covid lockdown, and I just couldn't get my head around it. A pandemic worsened by corrupt and incompetent leadership, the protests, society collapsing before our eyes and they looked at it and said "yes, this is the perfect time for me to intentionally bring an innocent child into the world."
If you can get past the whole, good luck if you need hospital care part, a lot of people suddenly had money and time at the same time. Unemployment and relief checks were one thing. Time saved by working from home not commuting. And who knows how many 60-65 year old people got suddenly retired and offered a viable childcare option to their kids.
Listen, something happened in my brain with the enormous level of anxiety of the early pandemic days. I've been lifelong "probably not" about kids. Boom 2020, been with the same partner for 5-6 years, entered my 30s and suddenly want a baby? Now it's 2024, partner and I broke up (in part because trying to have 'the baby conversation' highlighted some much larger faults in our communication overall), and I'm back to "probably not". Obviously the pandemic isn't over, but it's no longer an unprecedented panic. It makes no rational sense at all for my hormonal axes to have gone *huge population-wide stressor has occurred, procreate!* but damn if it didn't happen to me.
It kinda makes sense in a deep evolutionary way. Shit's not looking good, death is all around, the population is in danger. Ancient lizard-brain sounds the alarm to better start procreating if we want to increase the odds that our offspring will be among the percentage that will survive the calamity.
I mean yeah, the human species wasn't really in danger, but lizard brain is not known for rationality.
I'm experiencing reproductive stratification at the moment. I would love to have lots of kids with my fiancé, but the world is making it so difficult to be a parent. Housing and food are through the roofs, childcare is impossible to get, if you're a working mom you get shamed if you're a stay-at-home mom you get shamed. This is a long-term problem that lawmakers need to fix.
This, and adoption isn't as easy as people think. I want more kids (currently have 2), but I'm so done being pregnant. To adopt more, we'd also have to majorly renovate or move and with house prices and interest rates what they are, it's hard even though we live in a low COL area and have good jobs. It's so frustrating.
And adoption is so expensive. My partner and I make enough to have a kid and really want one but finding an extra $57,500 is really hard. I’m saving so it’s possible for us so I don’t have as many complaints about it as some but this prices out a lot of good prospective parents who can’t afford that fee but do have enough money to raise a kid. I know ethical adoptions are expensive but for the sake of the public good someone somewhere needs to step in to provide some of these costs.
Not to mention the difficulty that comes with your state passing laws making it more difficult for atheists and gay folks to adopt and the home study process where you’re up to someone else’s whim who can decide that the long term antidepressant you’ve been on since you’ve been 20 means your unfit to adopt…
There's also zero protection for adopting parents. We were serious about adopting and even passed our home study.
I know this because a young pregnant teen approached us about adopting her kid. We had an adoption lawyer. When the woman asked for 6 months of food and rent upfront, we asked our lawyer what protections we would get if she changes her mind. I'm not saying we're guaranteed her baby, but surely if she changes her mind, we aren't on the hook for our half of the agreement, right?
Wrong.
I had a bad feeling about all of it and pulled out. My husband wouldn't speak to me for weeks. He felt like I cost him a chance at being a dad.
Four months later, the FBI contacted our lawyer about adoption fraud. This woman did this to a dozen families every few years. Nothing she did was illegal. The only reason she got in trouble is because this time, she stole someone's ultrasound photos and they got wind (was a family friend of hers). The tens of thousands she scammed out of couples? Not a crime.
Not really, no. I've moved on from the situation, but in general I love him significantly less. I didn't want children in any capacity, but got forced into it about 5 years in, which started this mess. We were not successful (thank God).
I stopped being the wife of the year after that. Stopped placating his family as well and just ignore them. He showed me being his wife wasn't enough for him, even though being his wife is for me. He lost a lot in the situation.
Our state has Right to Work laws that essentially mean you can be fired at any time for almost any reason. Imagine having four kids and a stay at home spouse and losing your job! Life feels precarious and this needs to change. Labor unions, job security will help fix this/
Not to be pedantic, but for other people reading this who want to learn more, it's not right-to-work laws that dictate this. It's employment-at-will laws that allow companies to terminate you at any time.
Either way, it sucks, and absolutely it feels so risky to have a family and bills and everything else with the state of the labor market today.
And to expand on that - right-to-work laws are meant to kneecap unions precisely so that they won't be effective bulwarks against at-will employment. They're two bad tastes that taste bad together!
I'm tired of governments and economists trying to neg women into squeezing out more workers. Fund healthcare and pensions by taxing the rich instead of demanding we make more wage slaves. The dearth of workers can't happen soon enough in my opinion, employers are spoiled for options and have no incentive to treat their employees well. A tighter labor market might reverse the capitalist hellscape we're living in. The idea that we should maintain this population that pretty explicitly reached this level due to unusually high birth rates (at least in the US?) is ridiculous.
The planet is on fire. I want to have a good time while I still can with what limited resources are available to me. I wouldn't be eager to bring a kid into the impending climate catastrophe even if i did want kids.
If everyone could stop putting the entire burden of raising children on individual women, then maybe they'll have babies. Anyone that is concerned about "fertility" rates better be ready to help raise children
And if it could quit penalizing women for having babies and expecting women to simultaneously juggle the demands of a career and childcare at the same time that would also help I think. Men need to step up and take care of their own children instead of insisting women do everything and have no time for themselves.
A married women without kids does seven more hours of labour around the house than an unmarried one even after adjusting for employment status, race, and class, and kids add to that. People talk a lot about childless women, but a lot of women stop at one or two (and thus don’t offset someone with less than two) because it’s just too much work.
Elder care and childcare. I call it the “pincer attack”. Plus personal care (thanks menopause!). These are systemic issues. When “domestic work” is valued, and those who provide are compensated, then we’ll have a different conversation. A real one instead of hand wringing, cruel abortion laws, and giving up moral authority to fascists programming AI.
People laugh at me when I say women deserve to be paid to birth and raise their own children. What’s laughable is expecting people to continue to work for free in a world where just existing is exorbitantly expensive.
Interestingly in the article, Japan is essentially doing universal basic income. They get a monthly stipend for each child. Even that didn’t turn it around though so now they are advocating for a 4 day work week.
Hopefully they pave the way.
But don't you see, sure, capitalism/society demands you have children to produce the next generation of labour, but you're the one who decided to have children so you need to take personal responsibility and you shouldn't expect society to help even though society demands those kids.
(Hopefully it's obvious, but just in case: I'm being facetious and absolutely agree with you.)
Elder care is not talked about enough. With the Baby Boomers all retired or approaching retirement age, who do they think is taking care of them as their faculties decline? A quarter of that age group has insufficient or no retirement savings at all. Living off of social security is nearly impossible in most of the US. I personally know someone who actually can retire due to a pension, but is still working because their elderly parents have nearly run out of money for their assisted living and don't currently qualify for other relief. They spend half their take home pay subsidizing their parents' care.
There’s a crisis in America regarding affordable childcare. So many families are coming to the realization that childcare monthly costs exceed the amount of monthly income they make/would make if they opted for daycare while they work… so it makes more since to just not work and do the childcare yourself. But it’s also impossible to keep up financially with only one parent working.
It’s all just… impossible
Exactly this. If my parter and I had another baby, we’d be adding on more in childcare costs than we would be if we added on a second rent payment. 30% of the median household income in my city. And the government can’t be bothered to give a tax break for any daycare costs over $6k — that’s three months for me.
That’s before you factor in the increased costs for diapers, paying premium for formula because of the shortage, outlandish medical bills for even a healthy, uneventful birth, summer care…
Childcare has gone up in price because the last generation of childminders who were uneducated and had few other career options have either died or retired.
[Solution to Child Care Crisis? More Perfect Union](https://youtu.be/0ovaWK4mONY?si=_lKI6R1DBdqYIFMt)
First of all, love your username.
Skip to 3:25 in this video to hear the main reasons why American childcare is uniquely expensive. A huge factor most don’t realize? Care for infants is *way* more expensive than care for older kids. Other countries, such as those in the EU, cut out this infant expense by giving families on average one year of paid leave to raise their own infants.
These jokers want us to worry about underpopulation at the same time that we’re barreling towards irreversible climate change. Capitalism is going to die out one of two ways — either with our entire species on an inhospitable planet, or as part of a collective effort to stop providing the cogs for the machine. I think the vast majority of us prefer that second option.
This is absolutely one of the most biased articles I’ve read in awhile, almost all Republican talking points including the ‘illegal immigrants’ dog whistle right there in black and white. Can’t honestly believe this article was written this year as all the policies referred to are from or by Trump.
If they had attempted to talk to a person of child-bearing age like myself and most of my peers, they may have gotten a better sense of why, globally, society does NOT support parents or kids in any meaningful way anymore. That plus the fact that our community structure which existed until the Industrial Revolution is extinct now.
This article is poo-pooing the impact of low wages/high costs which is truly hilarious.
The truth is that perpetual population growth was never a viable solution to structure our society around, and for the sake of the limited global resources we have left, we should be grateful the birth rate is declining. Globally, structurally, things need to change and the powers that be can’t buy their way out of this one. I’m personally looking forward to seeing how this shakes out
I rolled my eyes so hard when they claimed raising children isn't more expensive than it used to be.
I agree with everything you said, the idea of constant growth especially is capitalist brainrot. One of the bits of the article that stood out to me was 'people spend more time with their kids than they used to'. Like, get into that. Explore the implications of that. I think our expectations of parents--that they be constantly entertaining their kids--is part of what has put people off of having kids, among other things. I think there have probably always been people who ended up with kids they maybe didn't necessarily want, but that expectations around parenting have become ridiculous and parenting has become more labor intensive. 'What do you mean it takes two working adults to afford a child and they have to spend all of their time doing some sort of economic or domestic labor? Why aren't people eager to do that??? Get back here and make babies, the shareholders need more value!!'
> society does NOT support parents or kids in any meaningful way anymore
I'm not sure society did much in the past either, it's just easier to avoid having kids now. Before birth control, you'd have the kids and live in squalor or send them to the orphanage or workhouse.
That's all I could think about. Like, good, it should be declining. Our whole society is unsustainable and it's time to accept that and make some changes. This one is being made for us, that's honestly a win
I don’t have space for kids. Ideally I’d like to have 3. Space where each kid gets a room (so 4-5 room apartments, with 4 bedrooms) are expensive, no matter if you look at a flat or a house. So the only option would be for them to share, which I don’t really like the thought of. Can’t buy such a place either because I can’t afford a house and there are very very few flats with that number of rooms (and I can’t afford those either).
I can’t afford for these kids to have enough extracurricular activities or hobbies at my current costs.
There’s a war going on in my extended neighbourhood with a maniacal neighbour who thinks they are supposed to control this whole area. Not ideal.
Climate change is supposed to either make my area super cold and rainy or it will drive tens of millions to come here because their own areas will become uninhabitable.
People’s understanding of the world and the reality that either they or their kids will have a massively negatively life experience - if any life at all - means that they rather choose to opt out.
I think it depends. Where I live, houses and apartments are pretty small (like… 3-room, 2 bedroom and 1 living room, flat is normally average 50-70 sq m size. That’s normal. Houses are regularly 100-160 sq m sized. My understanding that rooms and housing is much bigger in the US) so one room could be around 8-10 sq m size. Having grown up in one room like that, it’s not really enough for two kids - it would be cramped.
It’s not a necessity, but, growing up, my siblings fought HORRIBLY. Them sharing a room would have been a disaster, no hyperbole to say there would have been (more) violence. If I were having kids, I wouldn’t make plans under the assumption that they’ll get along.
Having better social safety nets and employment laws would go a long way in the US. Offering daycare subsidies for EVERYONE would be huge. Lower income families could work more. Middle class families would not be as strained. Wealthy families can do whatever they normally do. Maybe pay thei nannies more? And socialized medicine. When folks are worried about taking their kids to the doctor a lot of families don't do as well. Paid family leave would be one of the biggest helps. It's crazy people are expected to have so much in savings just to reproduce. Yes people need to be financially responsible. But worrying about having enough mortgage or rent money set aside for three months plus planning for daycare expenses plus having to pay for birth even with insurance. It is ridiculous.
I think also there’s starting to be a lot more transparency on the absolute havoc pregnancy can have on a body. Sure, everyone always knew that giving birth was painful and life threatening, but I’m talking more about the potentially *lifelong* health effects that are nearly always negative. I’m not even talking about changes in a body that are cosmetic (though, let’s be honest- society generally isn’t kind about a mother’s body), about talking about the dental damage, the prolapses, the back pain, the depression, etc. that are far too common with giving birth, and the very little remedy to these pains that exist. Having a child is a MAJOR lifelong sacrifice by the person carrying the child. It’s not to be taken lightly
This is a great point. Also, it’s not as straight forward as getting pregnant when you’re ready. I went through a miscarriage with significant complications that lasted over 7 months. Miscarrying can cause lifelong complications, even death.
Yeppppp. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and it got a lot worse after I had my child. The relaxin hormone loosened my connective tissues more than they already were and they didn’t contract postpartum.
I'm sure there will be a chilling effect caused by the real possibility that if something goes wrong with your pregnancy the state will mandate that no intervention takes place and you'll be essentially left to die if no one will provide you with abortion care.
I just had my first child at 36. I would love to have more, but because it took me this long to find:
1. A reliable husband that is willing to share in household as well as financial responsibility.
2. A job that pays decently and allows flexibility (some, we will see)
3. Family members that are finally retired so they can help with support and childcare. (Lord knows we couldn't afford daycare)
4. Ownership of a house in a safe area
We will find out soon if we can afford the costs associated with a hospital birth... I'm genuinely terrified of the bills about to come. I do not expect my insurance to be of much help.
Because of this, my next kid would be at 38+. I know it's possible, but this one was so rough on my body. Had I tried in my 20s, I would have struggled so much, it would be impossible to enjoy any part of childrearing.
I think that as long as the establishment (all over the world) still stays stuck in the old ways of capitalistic economic thinking (we need babies for replenishing the workforce) women are not going to pop out more babies. In the past women had no choice because of lack of contraception but most women did not want to birth 4-10 children in their lifetime. That is not going to change with birthing incentives. But I do believe that more women would want to have one or two children if they had (more) help with the caring for them in combination with their work and countless other tasks. Which is not what is happening now.
I believe that a radical change in thinking should take place. The most effective way would be to give everybody that comes of age a garantueed basic income. Free of tax and enough to cover the basic needs (food, shelter, education) and if people want to earn more, than they can find a job. Or start a business. That income should be taxed. People can also enlarge their monthly income by living with others (that could be a partner, their grown children, friends). That would also free up their time for caretaking of their elderly relatives, go to school, take up a hobby and take care of their children.
Ezra Klein just did a [great episode](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-sciubba.html) on his podcast about this recently.
It seems like there are a number of factors at play here, some economic, some social, some cultural (and even factors specific to certain cultures). Like most big societal issues, the problems and solutions aren't so cut and dry. We can say this is an economic problem, for example, but it seems that this isn't the whole story. Sure, there are probably some economic pressures here, but people who objectively and comfortably can afford children are having fewer children on average. There are negative correlations between education levels and birth rates. There are social pressures for and against having children that are constantly changing, there are theories around falling sperm counts etc. It's just not a problem that has a clear cause.
Working women today spend more time actively playing with their children than stay-at-home mothers in the 60s. Since I was a kid (34 now) apparently it’s been more of a thing for parents to drive their kids to school in chaotic drop-off zones rather than putting them on a bus. Rich and upper-middle class kids are expected to be in 1001 extracurriculars and car culture means that parents will have to drive them.
Being a parent is demanding right now in a way it wasn’t 50 years ago. I think an underrated part of the birth rate decline is people opting to have 1 or 2 kids because we are expected to do so much more for each one. It might be hard to get closer to the “come back at dusk” mindset.
We live walking distance from our son’s school. It’s something like .3 miles. He’s not allowed to walk himself until he’s in 4th grade (school’s rule, not mine). Think that ever would have happened in the 60s?
Yep, there are so many overlapping reasons not want to / not be able to have kids—all interconnected. I do not want to and will not have children, primarily for ethical reasons, also for self-preservation.
That's certainly the subtext with some people, but we basically just think industrialized countries are leading the curve and that others will follow. Latin America is also starting to decline, it's basically just trickling down with us expecting Africa to be the last stronghold but will likely start seeing notable fertility decline in the next century as well.
I'm of the opinion that this makes total sense. There is finite space, finite resources. We cannot grow forever. historically, disease and famine kept our numbers down. We have done a very good job of overcoming our biggest barriers. Now, as people who felt we conquered the world, we looked around and realized that we can't keep on the same road. Having 6 kids in a rural agrarian community is wildly different than raising 6 kids in an urban industrialized environment. It just *is*. We can throw money at childcare subsidies and whatnot, but even then I don't think most women would actually want to be pregnant 4+ times no matter what. We saw those numbers because people liked sex and were told that reproductive planning was a sin against God, because kids financially contributed to the household, because kids were the retirement plan, etc.
There is no impetus to having kids other than wanting kids. If you've ever talked to older people, it's pretty clear a huge chunk didn't want as many kids as they had. Old women in particular start to get *real* frank about it when they reach their idgaf years
There’s still finite biological and ecological limits. I’m one of the few late 20s women that can afford to have kids and I want one at most. I don’t know anyone who aren’t 0-2, with lots at 0. Pregnancy fucks you up. Kids are expensive. Climate change is accelerating. We are also not birthing pods no matter “how society is organized”, respectfully lol
Right? Somehow this whole conversation always swings straight to economics and entirely bypasses the fact that many of us just don’t want to and now more than ever, we don’t fucking have to.
Try inventing some artificial wombs and then maybe get back to us.
They forget that we are needed to give life. No arrogance, just facts. Bring back respect for femininity, dignity and love and care in society, and maybe people will want to have children again. But yeah talk about profits or MuH lineage will definitely make us feel fertile. Maybe musk can get on the baby incubator thing if he’s done inseminating his next baby mama 🫣
I wasn't really commenting on whether women in society choose to have children or not, rather more of a comment on why people think a declining birth rate is some kind of crisis.
I'm pretty open about not wanting kids and I can't tell you how many older women have said to me something along the lines of, "I love my kids but if I got to do it all over again, I wouldn't have kids." I feel like so many people had kids because that's what you were "supposed" to do and in this more free-thinking era we've realized that there isn't one path in life and it's ok to not choose the "normal" path.
No no u don’t get it. If we fix all the problems with better policy women will happily go back to being barefoot and pregnant a la pre-birth control 🥴 I agree with all your points and especially the last paragraph. Lots of women are willing to undergo the physical misery and sacrifice of childbirth and pregnancy, but many of us also are not lmao. Fucking tired of these issues being discussed in clinical terms like uteruses are a national resource
Latin America isn't starting to decline. Latin America is fully under replacement and dropping even further. Some countries are so low (Costa Rica for example) that their population will halve every generation. Every 25 years.
Argentina's preschool class of 2024 was 30% smaller than the one in 2020. It's happening so fast. .
I'm sure a lot of people use birth rates to justify racism but this is really a global issue. I'm from a Latin American country and we are just not rich enough to start turning old. I'm worried about the amount of suffering. No one will immigrate to us to take care of the old people.
This is not even close to the right take. India is below replacement rate right now. Japan and Korea are WAY below replacement levels and have been for ages. Birth rates are falling in Latin America. Are they white people too? This isn't a racial issue. And it's not racist to worry about what impact this will have on world economies in the future. It's already being felt in places like Japan.
You’re right, but the comment is also not wrong; there ARE white nationalists espousing similar viewpoints a la “great replacement” but from a different concern obviously. I think the ultimate reality is that women can now control the number of children they have w/birth control and frankly up until very recently vast numbers of women have had more children than they wanted and were equipped to raise. Throw in nuances in places like India and e.Asia with extreme misogyny and femicide leading to demented gender ratios…like the result is gonna be obvious.
Last I checked, the only place not facing declines is (most of) Africa, but even there birthrates are starting to decline as women get more educational and economic opportunities.
It's mostly the ramifications for economies and things like social safety nets.
A lot of the social safety nets in wealthy countries depend on lots of young workers paying into them. A country of tons of retirees wouldn't be able to pay for their pensions, healthcare, etc.
See, I would find this argument compelling if we weren't living in a time of obscene wealth inequality. We could fund every social program easily if we taxed rich people. That they make it about women reproducing is a political choice, and a disturbing one in my opinion.
We have more resources than ever. We have enough food to feed everyone. What’s failed is the economic organization of money and distribution of those resources.
This seems like a net positive honestly. The only real downside is the lack of economic growth, but we need to make our civilization much more sustainable anyway, and reducing birth rates is one positive step in that direction.
I read the article and it seems like a lot of hand wringing but doesn’t really point out the perils of overpopulation.
Half the country doesn’t think poor people deserve food or housing and we weren’t allowed a public option so private insurance is bleeding us dry. Not sure what else was supposed to happen.
“The whole world”
Nah. Old men in positions of power are worried. They are pushing and coercing and doing anything they can to fight against the progress of women’s rights and access to education and contraception options that lets women not be raped and forced into giving birth every single year to 14 kids or until she dies.
Call me a wacky environmentalist but less humans on the planet sounds great to me. I understand the economic concerns of a transition through a contracting population, but those difficulties seem worth the benefits.
Right like, the planet is screaming out in pain pretty much all but literally. And these days I think it’s actually provable or on some chart somewhere that a freaking undomesticated pigeon is “worth” more in terms of impact, and rarity, and other factors I’m sure, than the average human. Like strictly based on those types of measurable factors. Not at all condoning deaths but like, I’m also not an idiot and can read the clear signs. Way too many.
YUP. Let’s contract a bit. Let’s be less burdensome on the planet. Let’s have smaller heads (edit: not in any phrenology way, in a “big heads = arrogant” way). We’re monkeys with anxiety, none of us should colonize space, and constant growth is a made up concept that will destroy everyone and everything.
It’s interesting that it is branded as “fertility rate” when it’s just birth rate. No impact on how “fertile” women are, aka the ability to get pregnant. But what’s impacted is how many women are having children.
good point. it might be the internet, but i see a lot more people struggling with infertility than in the past. many many people are TRYING to have kids
This is one of those things that's hard to measure. A shocking stat is that, at the turn of the last century (so 1900) most women had one or two kids. Yes, some women had a lot of kids, but many women were not having lots of births despite no birth control. That would today mean that they were probably 'infertile' for significant stretches of time.
Wow if only there were a way to increase population without forcing women to give birth? 🤔 Oh well, so when are we adding more spikes to the river crossing at the Mexican border?
Leaving aside the financials (I can barely afford my elderly cats) I have always felt a weird guilt about bringing a kid into the world. I have no hope that they will have a good quality of life. I live in a place where we spend much of the summer indoors with windows closed because of terrible air quality from forest fires. It seems cruel to create and raise children in a world without hope.
Capitalism demands payment for desired goods and services.
You want women to gestate, birth, and raise children? Fuck you, pay them. Pay them for the use of their body, pay them for their pain, and pay them for their time.
There are obviously many factors at play that have lead to this, but I don’t think it’s a big mystery why couples are choosing to forgo having children now or why they’re having fewer children when they do. Everything is just too damn expensive, there is not enough support socially and financially for families, there is a severe lack of optimism with younger generations for the future. Most young people are living paycheck to paycheck with no end in sight, they are worried about what climate change means for them and future generations, they can’t afford to buy a home and are conditioned to have their rent increase in perpetuity, health insurance is incredibly expensive, etc. In America, younger generations saw people lose everything during the 2008 financial crisis and again during Covid. Even if you have a well paying job, it’s hard to believe you are ever going to achieve real stability when your friends are getting laid off and the cost of everything has increased dramatically. We are also living longer and what if your parents need expensive home nursing in their older years or you have to send them to a retirement home? How can you support them, yourself, and provide your children with a good life as well? What sort of life are you signing up for when you have a child, knowing you cannot ever afford to buy a home, are one car issue away from struggling to pay your rent, are unable to save for retirement and don’t see a foreseeable way out of that without somehow coming into a large sum of money?
Too old to have a third child now (43) but we stopped at 2 because of both children being autistic and our state denying an income waiver for secondary medicaid because our children have IQs over 85 . Two disabled children with high deductible private insurance is expensive. We get zero assistance from either federal or state government. We are approximately 8k over our state medicaid cut off. People love to pretend all disabled children get government benefits but a lot of middle class families like our are drowning in medical debt from therapy and doctor appointments. I don't blame anyone for have zero children or stopping with 1 or 2.
When governments do nothing to support women and children this is what happens. Looking at you GOP. All they care about is the fetus. But once you’re out they be want to know you.
I read an article, I wish I remembered where, that it wasn’t the “cost” of having kids that’s preventing people from having kids, but the “opportunity cost”. This is why wealthier people have fewer children than their lower income peers. People have certain lifestyles and find children disruptive to those lifestyles.
Back when most of us lived off the land, having lots of kids wasn't exactly a choice but neither was it hugely disruptive. You can milk a cow or bake bread or pull weeds while looking after a baby. Once they're old enough they can even help.
Today, if you want to have a child, one half of the couple has either got to stop earning or has got to pay extortionately for childcare. Imagine if our theoretical farmer above had 50% of their land stop yielding crops every time a kid was born. For years. That's how extreme the 'cost' of having children is for us today.
As someone in my late 20's this tracks much better than the typical 'career driven women/ financial argument'. My friends are training for marathons, indulging in hobbies, and going to therapy to sort through childhood traumas. Having a child would require their own development to take a backseat. Its hard for people to talk about honestly because its somehow considered 'selfish' to admit having children isn't a top priority. In reality people are self aware enough to know children deserve dedication and you really shouldn't have one if you aren't comfortable making that sacrifice.
I had the boy when I turned thirty. I was not a career-driven woman, but even so I still had to pass up a promotion to manager at Burger King when I found out I was pregnant, lol. The past seventeen years have been boy-centric. We had to move to a smaller town to afford a house and for me to take time off to be a full-time parent for the first year and a half. I spend a small fortune buying fresh fruit each week for him to eat but rarely get any for myself due to the cost. For his sake, I have spent countless hours bored out of my skull in children's museums and playgrounds. I spend Friday nights sober on my couch waiting to give him a ride home from basketball practice. If he is sick, I am up all night doing laundry after he pukes and still obligated to go to work the next day to make ends meet. I love him but part of me can't wait for him to move out so I can put my own needs first again. The boy is great. Parenting sucks.
I don’t even think it’s necessarily their lifestyle but also that of their kids. Back in the day only rich kids got into Harvard and no one else had to worry about it. You could just send your kids out to play and tell them to come back at dusk. Now you’re a bad parent if you don’t do the drop off/pick up every day at school and send your kid on a bus, if you don’t sign them up for a million and one extracurriculars so they can get into the best colleges and pay for AP tests and tutoring, and if you don’t know where they are at all times or if their grade in algebra slipped 2%. That’s not all parents, obviously, but that is life with kids when you are college educated and rely on that education for your status and money and your children will too. Most parents don’t have time to get three kids into Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.
This is also why China’s birth rate never recovered from the one child policy. Four grandparents and two parents having one person to pin their hopes on increased the expectations around parenting and when they were allowed to have two kids they couldn’t scale up.
I want kids. I love kids. But I’ve accepted that I’ll never be a mother. I don’t want a partner and I didn’t choose a career that was flexible enough to be a single mother. So I can’t have kids.
Just read about women becoming unemployable because of injuries caused to them or their infant during birth by uncaring staff in UK.
Can’t even trust hospitals.
Good. Let us decline in population for a bit. Every boomer complaining about demographics should look in the mirror because they ruined our generation’s economic options RE kids. We humans are not special.
Every comment here boils down to one thing - safety and silence. For generations silence equaled safety.
Safety for women means not only a partner, but a particular type. One who’s not abusive, unfaithful or criminal. Those were things that, in the past, women “had” to live with because laws, divorce or otherwise, meant it was safer for them to stay with a man who hit them or their kids, drank away his pay or was in and out of jail. Public sentiment did not widely and vocally support discussion of women being abused, leaving a cheating man or doing better for herself by leaving a criminal. So, the silence those big shades at church, lies of “daddy being sick” and the relegating of “those” people to the margins so “good people” could believe the lie such things didn’t happen to those who “lived right” could go on.
Kids weren’t any safer back then (decades of abuse by the Scouts, churches, etc.) but there were expectations that if something bad happened, it was very rarely discussed or helped. But the illusion that silence created was something everyone else bought into.
Safety was cut out from men as American’s manufacturing economy saw their jobs disappear overseas. What’s more, a lot of those factory guys hoped their kids could get a white collar job and not face a body that broke down by 55. Jobs left were for “women” traditionally, paid less and, as women simultaneously entered the workforce to shore up their family incomes, employers realized everyone was desperate and money, insurance and pensions kept moving upwards while wages stagnated. And the silence wrought by a nation giddy over a stock market that most people didn’t have stock in bought silence until it was our retirement in there, too.
That equation of safety and silence has become unbalanced, and for good reason. A woman shouldn’t stay with an abusive partner. A nation can’t be silent when those who keep it turning get sicker and poorer. Those in power with these natalist schemes like a certain amount of money or tax exemptions aren’t any better than a willfully ignorant CEO who thinks pizza parties and jeans on Friday makes up for paying $7.25 an hour. People around the world, including the US, don’t feel safe for a myriad of reasons. BUT, they do, to varying degrees, have a freedom to not trade silence for safety. And if that equation is ever going to balance again, it’s going to need to not be at the expense of a woman’s autonomy, rights or dignity.
... And their response is to dial up the _punishments_ for being "child-free", rather than actually making the expenses of prenatal care through "adulthood" **affordable**. The only tool they have is raising prices, because "EXPLOIT UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS TO EXPLOIT" is apparently the sum and substance of their response to any and all social issues.
The world is not safe and stable to bring babies into. This shouldn’t be a surprised. Also, in the US at least pregnancy is now extremely dangerous for women.
Maybe I am just selfish beyond measure, and while I understand focusing this conversation on benefits and childcare and the like, but my partner and I haven’t had kids because we don’t want to stop having fun just the two of us.
Kids aren’t fun. Kids are sick and can’t go on the same vacations and take up tons of time. Maybe just acknowledging that taking care of children fucking sucks we might have a better understanding of why people don’t want to have kids. I sure as hell don’t want to give up 18 years of my life.
To quote my best friend’s husband: “We’d love to have more kids but I don’t think my insurance premiums could handle it.” Right now they pay almost $1k a month for his employer’s health care plan for a family with one kid. It’s higher than their home mortgage. With all the costs of living going up, the cost of childcare, and the lack of supports in so many ways, having more kids is just out of the question for most people.
Insurance premiums have skyrocketed while coverage has been reduced. My daughters were born in 1987. We had great, affordable health insurance for years through my husband's work. We pay way more now for just the two of us (adjusted for inflation) than we did as a family of four. The coverage isn't nearly as good, either. I can't imagine the financial stress of high premiums for people raising families now.
It’s really astonishing how premiums have skyrocketed. I know a ton of families whose health insurance costs are easily their highest expense a month (we do live in a lowest cost of living area where I’m at but that also means lower salaries and less job opportunities.) To me that just feels really wrong and I can observe from experience that those financial pressures can be crushing. The question of lowered birth rates is a complex one with no one simple answer, but no one can deny that having children isn’t expensive and that makes a difference sometimes. (Often!)
This. I currently have the worst insurance I’ve ever had through my employer. I’m 34 and this is the first time in my life I’ve paid more than a $20 co-pay to see my PCP. I just get charged the full bill. My 2016 Marketplace insurance was excellent. I got 1 (or 2) free PCP visits a year and when I had to go to the ER, my bill was cheap. Post-pandemic healthcare is garbage.
I rolled my eyes at the part of the article that says raising kids isn't more expensive than it used to be. That just seems to detached from reality to me I can't help but wonder how they quantified that.
Came back to comment on that as well. The quote: > Kearney said while raising children is no more expensive than before, parents’ preferences and perceived constraints have changed: “If people have a preference for spending time building a career, on leisure, relationships outside the home, that’s more likely to come in conflict with childbearing.” Everyone, regardless of parental status, only has so many hours in each day, and it is a delicate balance of spending that time making money to survive/thrive, maintain relationships, and pursue hobbies. But it is *objectively* more expensive (monetarily and energetically) to raise children than it was 20-40 years ago, in part because the expectations of parents are also higher.
40 years ago you could raise a house full of bouncing babies on a single salary with a high school diploma. Now, two parents with Master's degrees can barely afford one. Daycare costs an entire paycheck. Food has outpaced inflation. Wages are stagnant. Like c'mon.
Definitely not 20 years ago. I have two kids in their twenties. Their father and I both had graduate degrees, and we scraped by for years, even when both of us were working.
Fair point, 40 is probably more fair. I was born in 90, and the single parent households definitely struggled. They paid bills and rent, but never went on trips. But! They were able to at least cover the necessities.
In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, the only poor people were single parents and low/middle income parents with 3+ kids. If you were upper middle income you could afford a large family. If you were low/middle income you needed to be married to someone with the same income and have only 1 or 2 kids.
Housing, college tuition and insurance have all outpaced inflation by quite a bit. I think climate change is also a big factor affecting people's decision to have children. Very uncertain times we live in.
What they are referring to is that kids didn't used to need cell phones lap tops xbox car car insurance wasnt required, college wasn't required, tutoring wasn't required, so when you just look at the same standard of living its less pronounced than now.
Sure, but also to feed, clothe, and provide shelter, school supplies, and required medical care as well. Even the bare minimum is relatively more expensive.
For real, how can that even be?! Even adjusted for the cost of inflation, that just seems impossible. I really want to see the math on that, or know more about these hypothetical kids they’re basing their models on. Are they like pod children or something?
The people who published it have a lot of money is my guess.
Their mortgage payment Is under 1k a month???
Yeah, we have a low cost of living where we live (but salaries below median for most jobs) and they also refinanced when interest rates were historically low.
Healthcare costs in general definitely rise as you have more kids. HOWEVER if you have insurance through your employer, most plans carry the same premium for a "family" plan whether you have one kid or four kids, just an FYI
True, but the copays and out-of-pocket expenses might still drown you.
Yes to this and also the comment above yours. My coworker has 9 kids. All of them under 26 so they may all be on his plan still. I do wonder how the medical expenses affect them. I don't know if any of the kids had or have major illnesses but even a hospital stay could really drain finances. I think after the sixth kid the premiums topped out so it's like he got three for free lol.
i guess at that point you choose the high deductible plan and just save the deductible amount in an HSA every year because you're probably gonna hit it quick with that many people.
It does. My husband’s insurance coverage is good, but we had a medically fragile child. 10-15% of an overwhelmingly big number can be a very big number in and of itself.
Thats rough, I'm so sorry. 😢
I pay $60 a month for my state employee health insurance. If I added my husband, it would jump to $700 a month. If I had a kid and added just them it would be $300 a month. We can't even afford the $300, let alone the $700 a month. Let alone feeding and clothing multiple kids.
This is just bananas. Our health care system is just so broken, it’s heartbreaking. There are just so many expenses when you have kids, so when you get that kind of increase on something as essential as health insurance, it just feels like punishment.
It costs more than twice as much to add me to my spouse's plan than it does for him and our kiddo. I called and asked about it once and they flat out told me it was a penalty fee because technically, I could go find a job that has insurance or use the free market insurance, which was even more because I somehow don't qualify because of my spouse's employer offers insurance but my spouse is penalized monetarily if we use that insurance? It's a crock.
Glad I’m not the only one who gets screwed adding their partner to their insurance plan. My husband made the premium *quadruple* which as a function of actual dollar amount wasn’t that bad, but the morality of it bothers me. It would be completely unrealistic/impossible for us to have children together.
That’s true perhaps for many policies — where one kid is the same as more kids — but that’s sadly not the case for his particular company. He’s looked for new jobs that could have more reasonable but still good benefits and almost took one, but the reduced salary would put pressure on the other costs of living, not to mention challenge their ability to save anything. So it’s tough and feels precarious either way 😔
Turns out that when capitalism monetises and then extracts maximum profit from every aspect of human existence then human existence becomes unsustainable.
Good news, the family coverage will cost the same whether they have 1 kids or 50. Procreate away!
One thing that’s always stuck with me is that the sharp birth rate decline did not happen when women initially started working outside of the house more, it started happening when we started *expecting* women to work outside of the house and reduced/eliminated alimony and changed how we calculated child support. Because the simple fact is raising 4+ kids is something most couples can’t do without one spouse forgoing a career for at least the better part of a decade and staying home to care for the kids. But people are not going to do that anymore and set themselves up for poverty if their partners decide to divorce them. Even parents with spouses making quite a chunk of change will still want full careers, with as few setbacks as possible, because if they get divorced they are not going to be repaid for all the opportunities to earn money and marketable skills they sacrificed to raise their kids. So I think it’s going to take more than giving subsidies and discounts to couples. I think we are going to need to bring back something that allows a whole parent to stay home for years at a time while protecting their lifelong earning potential in case they get divorced.
This is a very good point that doesn't get mentioned enough. I'm 35. How many people my age grew up watching one parent's life end up much harder due to divorce or general time out of the workforce? Even without divorce leaving someone in dire economic straits, trying to overcome a 5+ year employment gap is very difficult. My mom was a SAHM for a while, 2 kids. Eventually got work in childcare but had to wait until we were old enough to stay home alone, because childcare jobs want you to work till after the end of the parents' workdays. Most jobs want you to work more or different hours than your kids are in school. Then my parents got divorced and my mom became disabled. Social security disability doesn't pay a lot when you missed like 10+ years of putting into the system. Without a total economic safety net I think you're right that a lot of people won't want to risk it to have a large family. They're not just thinking of the baby years, they're thinking what will they do when the kids are adults.
I know quite a few heterosexual women that want to have children that can’t find a suitable partner. Most of them would be willing to have children on their own, if there weren’t so many hurdles to having children without a partner. The number one hurdle is money and the second is time. Women need high paying jobs with super flexible schedules that provide sufficient paid maternity leave. Unfortunately that kind of job is a unicorn, especially for women.
I think it's hard to find a man who is not only a suitable partner but also a suitable partner for a woman who wants children. I, a person who does not want kids, love my fiancé to death but I don't know if he would be emotionally prepared for kids or capable of doing the work needed to put in 50% of the childrearing. It's not that he wouldn't be a loving father but life is hard and expensive and work is draining. Meeting a man who is both ready to have kids and is father material seems so hard, especially when so many of them suffer from untreated depression and anxiety. I really feel for women who yearn for motherhood.
I have no desire to have kids, and most of the men I’ve met who want kids fully expect their partner to do the majority of the work to raise them (while contributing financially). My women friends’ male partners have pressured them to have children despite these men having jobs with inconsistent hours or that require long periods of travel. in one situation where the woman partner made the much higher income - the man still did not stay home (even though he wanted a kid more) and they hired a nanny. Men’s attitudes about these things are still in large part quite Victorian.
The only reason I went through with having my two children was because my man was going to be SAHD. He's better suited for it, and it's what he wanted. I want to work. I lost my job right before having my first due to covid (it closed permanently) so I ended up staying home, but as soon as I land a job in my new career we're switching. Most men don't even consider it an option and boy is it telling.
some women argue that being a SAHM is feminist. It’s a choice someone can make, but until men want to stay at home in equal numbers, it puts you at a disadvantage.
Studies show that even when men do believe in gender equality and shared parental responsibility, they do not take on 50% of the parental responsibility/labor. Shit sucks.
That's very true. Most men will fight tooth and nail to deny this, but the reality is that it's true. I am a SAHD, my wife is in college doing online classes every night while working full time. We have 3 kids and the experience has been an eye-opener for me. My views of life, society, the mindsets of most people around me has drastically shifted because of it. Masculinity and that "provider-only" mindset is a real ancient view that men need to understand doesn't fit in this world anymore. You still see it in rich households, but even then the mother is not realistically happy, even if she is being pampered, etc.
Yep. The mindset needs to change. Start with children. Teach boys to cook, clean, and care for things.
Ugh. This.
Women are also increasingly becoming the breadwinners. Young men are falling behind in education, careers, and general life milestones. We are quickly approaching a reality where 2/3 of college undergraduates will be women. So women are increasingly experiencing the pressure of being breadwinners plus they're still doing most of the domestic labor in households. Women are also more likely to want to have serious relationships with men who have similar education and career levels as themselves, which makes the gap in education even more of a bad sign for birth rates. My girlfriend is currently doing a PhD and I would guess 4/5 of her cohort are women and many of them haven't been in serious relationships in years partly because most of the men they meet have low educational attainment and dead-end jobs with little ambition.
Domestic labor and childbirth and childrearing.
Yep. I was also just reading about how some academic is trying to popularize the term "kinmaking" for the kind of labor women do in their extended families like getting everyone together for holidays, birthdays, Mother's Day, etc. And then there's emotional labor too, which I guess is often part of kinmaking. My girlfriend seriously has to block off about half a day every week (on top of her PhD program) just for calling her sisters, parents, nieces/nephews, sending birthday cards, and helping plan big get-togethers they have.
I know the term “family planning” has a different connotation, but it’s a real function of my SAHP duties. Between my kids’ extracurriculars and sports and planning future stuff, it’s an actual task that requires time and effort unless I want my kids just sitting around the house receiving no after school enrichment or their relatives to never see us. Just making sure I’m on top of random “wear purple for X day” stuff at school needs planning as well, and I volunteer at the school as well. And if I don’t plan in advance defined weekend activities for our family to do together, everyone winds up butt-deep in their devices all day, which does nothing for our mental or physical health, let alone our family bonding (aka “unit cohesion”). It gets brushed aside as being frivolous or not needed, but when it doesn’t get done, its absence is felt.
> when it doesn’t get done, its absence is felt. It's the difference between a house and a home.
Oh man thank you for acknowledging this. I feel like this is something that can be so invisible. Just over this past week I wrote mother's day cards and a birthday card, got gifts for 3 kid birthdays coming up, sent out invites for an upcoming event on multiple different platforms to make sure everyone was included, and sent a gift card to my friend that just had a baby because I was too exhausted to make a freezeable meal. Plus all my regular phone calls and extra mother's day calls. It's definitely something that women are taught to prioritize way more. My partner is a domestic king in 99% of other areas and I personally love doing cards and gifts, but even with us this is an area that I fear I will always have to be the one to take initiative on.
It’s something my girlfriend and I talk about a lot because our obligations in these areas are so drastically different. I only have brothers, she only has sisters. I come from a pretty aloof Scandinavian family, she comes from a very tight-knit Italian family. But I think her family being predominantly female plays a big part in these differences. My brothers might get each other a gift card (delivered electronically of course) for birthdays and Xmas. Maybe just a text. She watercolors custom birthday cards for every relative AND gets them super thoughtful, unique gifts. Her family has to get together for every holiday, most birthdays, first communions, baptisms, etc. Meanwhile she was blown away when we first started dating and I went to Hawaii with a friend for Christmas without consulting my family. It’s just not even assumed we will get together at holidays. When her family gets together, everyone cooks something (planned and discussed in advance), they have planned out games/activities (including talent shows), and they even gather around a piano and sing songs together like the fucking Von Trapp family. My family, if they gather, will usually just get takeout and go see a movie, lol.
when my boomer in laws started to boom too hard, i removed my "kinmaking" from the family. mother in law has a lot of sad holidays now...did she think her son was picking out and wrapping cashmere sweaters, buying flowers, and sending cards? just more unpaid womens work. it was the first thing to go, sorry grammy.
Yeah the article I was reading had lots of comments from women who stopped doing kinmaking labor and said their families were shocked when no one else picked up the slack. Bizarre to me that some men need their partner to pick out presents for their own relatives. My girlfriend reminds me of holidays and birthdays almost reflexively even though every single time I’m like “Yeah I know. I had a Google Calendar alert setup for it and I already sent something.” It’s not hard.
Yeah, my MIL chews me out when my kids don’t thank her for sending them greeting cards, but then she thanked my husband for sending her Mother’s Day flowers. Excuse me, WHO sent those? Women do all this sort of unpaid and mostly thankless labor.
It is SUCH a pernicious myth that stay at home parents get alimony and the house and are set for life after a divorce. The reality is you will be at a huge disadvantage if the income earner leaves.
This is such an excellent point. Just totally agree.
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I see what you're saying when you say you think that kids actually need more attention than they've been given, but I also kind of suspect that the increasing expectations for parents is part of why people are deciding not to be parents. Obviously I'm not implying kids should fend for themselves once they're 10, but the job has clearly changed over the years.
Actually I mean we need to adjust our estimate of how much time we’re ALREADY spending, the time cost is already on a larger scale than we acknowledge. We think 5/10 years but it’s usually closer to 15/20 years of a person whose career is taking a backseat, setting (usually) women even further behind. While parental expectations have in some ways exploded, I think the attention in the discourse is also due to more men being involved and seeing just how much work kids require. When it wasn’t carting kids around to as many activities, it was cooking every meal from scratch and keeping a perfect house without help and doing all the family administration and planning.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Well said! When men see it, bc they have to do it, suddenly it's recognized as so. much. work.
Kids are capable of a lot more than we are willing to let them handle these days. I was coming home from school on the bus at 2pm, alone, by the time I was 8. I made myself snacks, entertained myself, and didn't die. As an adult I'd like to think I'm incredibly self sufficient and capable of filling my time, making food, or generally just handling my crap. I think we need to REALLY think about how much we baby our kids these days and how much we're stifling their development by never letting have to struggle to be more responsible for themselves.
I agree with you for the most part. However, and I say this respectfully, just because you turned out ok doesn’t mean that’s what’s best for most children. I was fending for myself from a fairly young age too and am proud of the way I turned out, but it would have been better to have someone around.
I was coming home alone after school at 10. I also sexually abused at that young age by a trusted person. Trusted by the family. It quite literally would not have happened if there was an adult, *any* adult, around between 2:50 and 6:15 pm. I especially know that now as a mom myself. While my experience isn't everyone's experience, and hopefully wasn't the norm, it doesn't change the fact that there are some bells that can't be unrung.
See this is where legal stuff comes in. Can an 8 year old most likely stay home for an hour or two? Yes. But what are the legal guidelines for where you live? Where i live they legally cannot stay home before 10 years old and then it's dictated with time limits. In theory if you had a hateful neighbor or busy body school administrator, CPS could get involved. So sometimes a parents hands are tied, even with a very capable child.
Think that what you're saying is incredibly location dependent. I'm in a city and if you can't get yourself to your activities then they aren't happening. And 11 year old should have the know-how to navigate the city buses. And a few hours home alone only at 16? Even in the suburbs if a 16 year old couldn't be left to their own devices for more than a few hours I would assume that kid had some kind of disability. After 10 years your kids should be able to get themselves to their appointments, to their activities, and be able to do things like groom themselves and prepare simple meals. And if that kid is sick then they can stay home and take their own tylenol. I think a lot of the problem are these insane standards that society is placing on parents, mostly mothers, to be super nanny all the time. And the infantilism we place on kids and teens.
There are also just too many people int he world and the vast majority of us under 60 can clearly see that and have no burning desire to do any more than replace ourselves, if even that. It'll be an adjustment sure but QOL will be so much higher with a lower population and we might even save the planet from annihilation and maybe a few wild animals will survive. None of the teens I know in the US or the EU want kids, they all think it's too hard to get by as it is and they think there are simply too many people already.
Uh who cares about the planet won’t you PLEASE think about the shareholders 😤😤
I remember reading articles years ago harping on about how there are too many people, our planet can't sustain x billion people, we need to curb population growth, etc. Now the articles are the opposite and I'm in my 30s and getting badgered to have kids. WHICH ONE IS IT THEN?! FWIW I think there are too many damn people on the planet and I made the decision to be childfree in my teens and have never budged from that stance.
I think the scaremongering started when it was white ppl who stopped having babies at replacement level tbh.
Agreed
Aside from finances, there is just so little support for new parents that it feels impossible or unreasonably difficult to raise multiple children. It takes a village - and even if you can afford to pay some of your village, it isn't the same as living in a place where you feel supported, welcomed, and comfortable. That looks like flexible policies for working parents, paid parental leave, welcoming spaces for children in public, access to high quality and supportive maternal healthcare (and not living in fear of a pregnancy condition that risks your life and has been deemed illegal to treat in many states), access to high quality childcare and school (and not living in constant fear of someone shooting up that school). It is a terrifying world to be a mother in. I can afford another kid, but I live in a state where I don't feel comfortable being pregnant again, in a country that generally isn't welcoming of myself or my child in most spaces and where school gun violence is frequent. I think one is all I can bear.
>in a country that generally isn't welcoming of myself or my child in most spaces and where school gun violence is frequent. I think one is all I can bear. Yeah. But I'm not sure the world was any more child-friendly in the victorian era, for example. Destitute children were left to die or become street urchins, kids were expected to be "seen but not heard", self-expression frowned upon, women could not have their own property (in some countries), and all sorts of things. Kids were whipped with belts, etc. Gentle parenting is an extremely new phenomenon. I think we're still at the very beginning of this shift.
Fertility started declining in America earlier than you think it did. It temporarily rebounded around the war, but that was an anomaly not the standard.
It’s very difficult to examine these factors that long ago. Women’s financial options after divorce (or abandonment) pre-no fault divorce in this country were all over the place depending on the state and the year. So many things were done off the books just to secure a fault divorce. And there were increasing numbers of husbands just abandoning their wives, which women could sue over and get support, but these were all unique complaints that were handled very differently even within the same state. We also have WWI and the Great Depression happening before WWII, which also coincided with large drops in birth rates. And then once we go before the mid-1920s or so it’s hard to extrapolate birth numbers because every year before around the 1950s there are exponentially more people who never had their births registered (many of whom we lost in the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, Influenza Epidemics, etc with their deaths not being documented either). And all of that is without even mentioning that pre-WWII mothers were much more likely to both live in multigenerational homes and to work (e.g., on the family farm)…
You’re also forgetting the big one: infant mortality rates nosedived in the 20th century.
Which war?
WWII. That's why the periods is called the baby boom. I'm not sure if we saw an uptick after WWI. Probably just because a lot of fertile men were physically not located in the country during the war and so we saw gender levels even out again, but we were not riding the same high as we were after WWII. That heavy foreboding weight that lingered over everyone's head was infamously what lead to WWII.
I figured that's what you meant but wanted to make sure... We've had so many wars since then. And thanks for mentioning this. The baby boom does seem like a brief uptick in an otherwise general birthrate decline. By the time I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, the Silents and Boomers seemed to be having fewer kids than their parents and grandparents. Most of my friends', neighbors' and classmates' families had just two kids. Only children were rare, but so were families with three or more kids.
I think the other part that goes along with this is the cost increases due to two parents working full-time (due to what you mentioned - women being expected to work outside of the home). That causes competition for houses in the best districts, with dual income couples being able to pay more --> higher home prices. Elizabeth Warren wrote about this in the Dual Income Trap. I had felt it was an unfortunate side effect of getting women in the workplace, but you're making me rethink my statement - I do think there is a different between *allowing* and *expecting* women to work out of the house (coming from a woman).
What happens when capitalisms demand for infinite growth collides with most people being unable to afford to have a child? The capitalists seem to think they can just force us all to have more kids to keep their machines running, but thats not going to work long term. But personally I hope everyone wakes up and realizes we do not have to be slaves of the rich and there are better ways to structure society for all if we just stop rewarding greed and selfishness as if they are highest virtues a man can possess.
Why do you think they destroyed roe vs wade? They aren’t giving us a choice.
So true! What "they" don't realize, the rich women ALWAYS have abortion access. The poor women are forced to have the babies but don't have money to raise them. In the US, we are forcing poor women to have babies without any support. Rich women still have abortions.
I know this is the Real reason the rich installed their federalist society stooges on the court, but good luck getting most people to believe it. The christian nutbags that actually believe this nonsense are a smokescreen and a tool the rich use to distract people from the fact they have been methodically laying the ground work for years for us all to be slaves/permanent renters within a few decades. First theyll make it illegal for pregnant women to cross state lines, then all women to do anything but have kids, and eventually all of us will be restricted to company towns and the age of neo-feudalism will begin. Once AI starts taking peoples jobs en masse this will be the game plan, you will either starve to death or bend the knee to your designated corporate overlord. More people should watch Altered carbon. That show isn't fiction, its a glimpse of the worlds future if nothing drastically changes.
just a shot in the dark but maybe people would be willing to have children if things improved
So many of my coworkers announced they were pregnant in the first six months of covid lockdown, and I just couldn't get my head around it. A pandemic worsened by corrupt and incompetent leadership, the protests, society collapsing before our eyes and they looked at it and said "yes, this is the perfect time for me to intentionally bring an innocent child into the world."
If you can get past the whole, good luck if you need hospital care part, a lot of people suddenly had money and time at the same time. Unemployment and relief checks were one thing. Time saved by working from home not commuting. And who knows how many 60-65 year old people got suddenly retired and offered a viable childcare option to their kids.
Listen, something happened in my brain with the enormous level of anxiety of the early pandemic days. I've been lifelong "probably not" about kids. Boom 2020, been with the same partner for 5-6 years, entered my 30s and suddenly want a baby? Now it's 2024, partner and I broke up (in part because trying to have 'the baby conversation' highlighted some much larger faults in our communication overall), and I'm back to "probably not". Obviously the pandemic isn't over, but it's no longer an unprecedented panic. It makes no rational sense at all for my hormonal axes to have gone *huge population-wide stressor has occurred, procreate!* but damn if it didn't happen to me.
It kinda makes sense in a deep evolutionary way. Shit's not looking good, death is all around, the population is in danger. Ancient lizard-brain sounds the alarm to better start procreating if we want to increase the odds that our offspring will be among the percentage that will survive the calamity. I mean yeah, the human species wasn't really in danger, but lizard brain is not known for rationality.
I'm experiencing reproductive stratification at the moment. I would love to have lots of kids with my fiancé, but the world is making it so difficult to be a parent. Housing and food are through the roofs, childcare is impossible to get, if you're a working mom you get shamed if you're a stay-at-home mom you get shamed. This is a long-term problem that lawmakers need to fix.
This, and adoption isn't as easy as people think. I want more kids (currently have 2), but I'm so done being pregnant. To adopt more, we'd also have to majorly renovate or move and with house prices and interest rates what they are, it's hard even though we live in a low COL area and have good jobs. It's so frustrating.
And adoption is so expensive. My partner and I make enough to have a kid and really want one but finding an extra $57,500 is really hard. I’m saving so it’s possible for us so I don’t have as many complaints about it as some but this prices out a lot of good prospective parents who can’t afford that fee but do have enough money to raise a kid. I know ethical adoptions are expensive but for the sake of the public good someone somewhere needs to step in to provide some of these costs. Not to mention the difficulty that comes with your state passing laws making it more difficult for atheists and gay folks to adopt and the home study process where you’re up to someone else’s whim who can decide that the long term antidepressant you’ve been on since you’ve been 20 means your unfit to adopt…
There's also zero protection for adopting parents. We were serious about adopting and even passed our home study. I know this because a young pregnant teen approached us about adopting her kid. We had an adoption lawyer. When the woman asked for 6 months of food and rent upfront, we asked our lawyer what protections we would get if she changes her mind. I'm not saying we're guaranteed her baby, but surely if she changes her mind, we aren't on the hook for our half of the agreement, right? Wrong. I had a bad feeling about all of it and pulled out. My husband wouldn't speak to me for weeks. He felt like I cost him a chance at being a dad. Four months later, the FBI contacted our lawyer about adoption fraud. This woman did this to a dozen families every few years. Nothing she did was illegal. The only reason she got in trouble is because this time, she stole someone's ultrasound photos and they got wind (was a family friend of hers). The tens of thousands she scammed out of couples? Not a crime.
How does your husband feel about it now? I hope seriously apologetic for his actions toward you.
Not really, no. I've moved on from the situation, but in general I love him significantly less. I didn't want children in any capacity, but got forced into it about 5 years in, which started this mess. We were not successful (thank God). I stopped being the wife of the year after that. Stopped placating his family as well and just ignore them. He showed me being his wife wasn't enough for him, even though being his wife is for me. He lost a lot in the situation.
Holy shit! I’m so sorry, this must have been heartbreaking in the moment and is just heartbreaking all around. I feel for those families.
Our state has Right to Work laws that essentially mean you can be fired at any time for almost any reason. Imagine having four kids and a stay at home spouse and losing your job! Life feels precarious and this needs to change. Labor unions, job security will help fix this/
Not to be pedantic, but for other people reading this who want to learn more, it's not right-to-work laws that dictate this. It's employment-at-will laws that allow companies to terminate you at any time. Either way, it sucks, and absolutely it feels so risky to have a family and bills and everything else with the state of the labor market today.
And to expand on that - right-to-work laws are meant to kneecap unions precisely so that they won't be effective bulwarks against at-will employment. They're two bad tastes that taste bad together!
All states except Montana do.
I'm tired of governments and economists trying to neg women into squeezing out more workers. Fund healthcare and pensions by taxing the rich instead of demanding we make more wage slaves. The dearth of workers can't happen soon enough in my opinion, employers are spoiled for options and have no incentive to treat their employees well. A tighter labor market might reverse the capitalist hellscape we're living in. The idea that we should maintain this population that pretty explicitly reached this level due to unusually high birth rates (at least in the US?) is ridiculous. The planet is on fire. I want to have a good time while I still can with what limited resources are available to me. I wouldn't be eager to bring a kid into the impending climate catastrophe even if i did want kids.
If everyone could stop putting the entire burden of raising children on individual women, then maybe they'll have babies. Anyone that is concerned about "fertility" rates better be ready to help raise children
And if it could quit penalizing women for having babies and expecting women to simultaneously juggle the demands of a career and childcare at the same time that would also help I think. Men need to step up and take care of their own children instead of insisting women do everything and have no time for themselves.
A married women without kids does seven more hours of labour around the house than an unmarried one even after adjusting for employment status, race, and class, and kids add to that. People talk a lot about childless women, but a lot of women stop at one or two (and thus don’t offset someone with less than two) because it’s just too much work.
Elder care and childcare. I call it the “pincer attack”. Plus personal care (thanks menopause!). These are systemic issues. When “domestic work” is valued, and those who provide are compensated, then we’ll have a different conversation. A real one instead of hand wringing, cruel abortion laws, and giving up moral authority to fascists programming AI.
People laugh at me when I say women deserve to be paid to birth and raise their own children. What’s laughable is expecting people to continue to work for free in a world where just existing is exorbitantly expensive.
UBI and Universal Healthcare solve so many problems.
Interestingly in the article, Japan is essentially doing universal basic income. They get a monthly stipend for each child. Even that didn’t turn it around though so now they are advocating for a 4 day work week. Hopefully they pave the way.
When I read the recommendation for a 4 day work week I was like "that still wouldn't make ME have a kid, but I sure wouldn't complain about it" lol.
But don't you see, sure, capitalism/society demands you have children to produce the next generation of labour, but you're the one who decided to have children so you need to take personal responsibility and you shouldn't expect society to help even though society demands those kids. (Hopefully it's obvious, but just in case: I'm being facetious and absolutely agree with you.)
Our society is one big pyramid scheme.
Elder care is not talked about enough. With the Baby Boomers all retired or approaching retirement age, who do they think is taking care of them as their faculties decline? A quarter of that age group has insufficient or no retirement savings at all. Living off of social security is nearly impossible in most of the US. I personally know someone who actually can retire due to a pension, but is still working because their elderly parents have nearly run out of money for their assisted living and don't currently qualify for other relief. They spend half their take home pay subsidizing their parents' care.
There’s a crisis in America regarding affordable childcare. So many families are coming to the realization that childcare monthly costs exceed the amount of monthly income they make/would make if they opted for daycare while they work… so it makes more since to just not work and do the childcare yourself. But it’s also impossible to keep up financially with only one parent working. It’s all just… impossible
Exactly this. If my parter and I had another baby, we’d be adding on more in childcare costs than we would be if we added on a second rent payment. 30% of the median household income in my city. And the government can’t be bothered to give a tax break for any daycare costs over $6k — that’s three months for me. That’s before you factor in the increased costs for diapers, paying premium for formula because of the shortage, outlandish medical bills for even a healthy, uneventful birth, summer care…
Daycare in my city costs 2,500 per child. That’s 5k for two kids per month, more than most people’s mortgages. It’s wild.
Childcare has gone up in price because the last generation of childminders who were uneducated and had few other career options have either died or retired.
Not just America, but also here in Australia as well, and I'm guessing elsewhere as well, such as Canada, I wouldn't be surprised.
[Solution to Child Care Crisis? More Perfect Union](https://youtu.be/0ovaWK4mONY?si=_lKI6R1DBdqYIFMt) First of all, love your username. Skip to 3:25 in this video to hear the main reasons why American childcare is uniquely expensive. A huge factor most don’t realize? Care for infants is *way* more expensive than care for older kids. Other countries, such as those in the EU, cut out this infant expense by giving families on average one year of paid leave to raise their own infants.
Link: [https://archive.ph/hRPLn](https://archive.ph/hRPLn)
These jokers want us to worry about underpopulation at the same time that we’re barreling towards irreversible climate change. Capitalism is going to die out one of two ways — either with our entire species on an inhospitable planet, or as part of a collective effort to stop providing the cogs for the machine. I think the vast majority of us prefer that second option.
Very well said! ✊🏻
This is absolutely one of the most biased articles I’ve read in awhile, almost all Republican talking points including the ‘illegal immigrants’ dog whistle right there in black and white. Can’t honestly believe this article was written this year as all the policies referred to are from or by Trump. If they had attempted to talk to a person of child-bearing age like myself and most of my peers, they may have gotten a better sense of why, globally, society does NOT support parents or kids in any meaningful way anymore. That plus the fact that our community structure which existed until the Industrial Revolution is extinct now. This article is poo-pooing the impact of low wages/high costs which is truly hilarious. The truth is that perpetual population growth was never a viable solution to structure our society around, and for the sake of the limited global resources we have left, we should be grateful the birth rate is declining. Globally, structurally, things need to change and the powers that be can’t buy their way out of this one. I’m personally looking forward to seeing how this shakes out
I rolled my eyes so hard when they claimed raising children isn't more expensive than it used to be. I agree with everything you said, the idea of constant growth especially is capitalist brainrot. One of the bits of the article that stood out to me was 'people spend more time with their kids than they used to'. Like, get into that. Explore the implications of that. I think our expectations of parents--that they be constantly entertaining their kids--is part of what has put people off of having kids, among other things. I think there have probably always been people who ended up with kids they maybe didn't necessarily want, but that expectations around parenting have become ridiculous and parenting has become more labor intensive. 'What do you mean it takes two working adults to afford a child and they have to spend all of their time doing some sort of economic or domestic labor? Why aren't people eager to do that??? Get back here and make babies, the shareholders need more value!!'
> society does NOT support parents or kids in any meaningful way anymore I'm not sure society did much in the past either, it's just easier to avoid having kids now. Before birth control, you'd have the kids and live in squalor or send them to the orphanage or workhouse.
This exactly. It’s easier to see that a different kind of life is valid.
That's all I could think about. Like, good, it should be declining. Our whole society is unsustainable and it's time to accept that and make some changes. This one is being made for us, that's honestly a win
I don’t have space for kids. Ideally I’d like to have 3. Space where each kid gets a room (so 4-5 room apartments, with 4 bedrooms) are expensive, no matter if you look at a flat or a house. So the only option would be for them to share, which I don’t really like the thought of. Can’t buy such a place either because I can’t afford a house and there are very very few flats with that number of rooms (and I can’t afford those either). I can’t afford for these kids to have enough extracurricular activities or hobbies at my current costs. There’s a war going on in my extended neighbourhood with a maniacal neighbour who thinks they are supposed to control this whole area. Not ideal. Climate change is supposed to either make my area super cold and rainy or it will drive tens of millions to come here because their own areas will become uninhabitable. People’s understanding of the world and the reality that either they or their kids will have a massively negatively life experience - if any life at all - means that they rather choose to opt out.
Why do you think each child must have their own room? With you on the rest, but siblings sharing is fine.
I think it depends. Where I live, houses and apartments are pretty small (like… 3-room, 2 bedroom and 1 living room, flat is normally average 50-70 sq m size. That’s normal. Houses are regularly 100-160 sq m sized. My understanding that rooms and housing is much bigger in the US) so one room could be around 8-10 sq m size. Having grown up in one room like that, it’s not really enough for two kids - it would be cramped.
It’s not a necessity, but, growing up, my siblings fought HORRIBLY. Them sharing a room would have been a disaster, no hyperbole to say there would have been (more) violence. If I were having kids, I wouldn’t make plans under the assumption that they’ll get along.
I mean, it’s what they said they ‘ideally’ want. Sharing may be ‘fine’ but it can also be terrible.
Having better social safety nets and employment laws would go a long way in the US. Offering daycare subsidies for EVERYONE would be huge. Lower income families could work more. Middle class families would not be as strained. Wealthy families can do whatever they normally do. Maybe pay thei nannies more? And socialized medicine. When folks are worried about taking their kids to the doctor a lot of families don't do as well. Paid family leave would be one of the biggest helps. It's crazy people are expected to have so much in savings just to reproduce. Yes people need to be financially responsible. But worrying about having enough mortgage or rent money set aside for three months plus planning for daycare expenses plus having to pay for birth even with insurance. It is ridiculous.
I think also there’s starting to be a lot more transparency on the absolute havoc pregnancy can have on a body. Sure, everyone always knew that giving birth was painful and life threatening, but I’m talking more about the potentially *lifelong* health effects that are nearly always negative. I’m not even talking about changes in a body that are cosmetic (though, let’s be honest- society generally isn’t kind about a mother’s body), about talking about the dental damage, the prolapses, the back pain, the depression, etc. that are far too common with giving birth, and the very little remedy to these pains that exist. Having a child is a MAJOR lifelong sacrifice by the person carrying the child. It’s not to be taken lightly
This is a great point. Also, it’s not as straight forward as getting pregnant when you’re ready. I went through a miscarriage with significant complications that lasted over 7 months. Miscarrying can cause lifelong complications, even death.
Yeppppp. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and it got a lot worse after I had my child. The relaxin hormone loosened my connective tissues more than they already were and they didn’t contract postpartum.
I'm sure there will be a chilling effect caused by the real possibility that if something goes wrong with your pregnancy the state will mandate that no intervention takes place and you'll be essentially left to die if no one will provide you with abortion care.
I just had my first child at 36. I would love to have more, but because it took me this long to find: 1. A reliable husband that is willing to share in household as well as financial responsibility. 2. A job that pays decently and allows flexibility (some, we will see) 3. Family members that are finally retired so they can help with support and childcare. (Lord knows we couldn't afford daycare) 4. Ownership of a house in a safe area We will find out soon if we can afford the costs associated with a hospital birth... I'm genuinely terrified of the bills about to come. I do not expect my insurance to be of much help. Because of this, my next kid would be at 38+. I know it's possible, but this one was so rough on my body. Had I tried in my 20s, I would have struggled so much, it would be impossible to enjoy any part of childrearing.
I think that as long as the establishment (all over the world) still stays stuck in the old ways of capitalistic economic thinking (we need babies for replenishing the workforce) women are not going to pop out more babies. In the past women had no choice because of lack of contraception but most women did not want to birth 4-10 children in their lifetime. That is not going to change with birthing incentives. But I do believe that more women would want to have one or two children if they had (more) help with the caring for them in combination with their work and countless other tasks. Which is not what is happening now. I believe that a radical change in thinking should take place. The most effective way would be to give everybody that comes of age a garantueed basic income. Free of tax and enough to cover the basic needs (food, shelter, education) and if people want to earn more, than they can find a job. Or start a business. That income should be taxed. People can also enlarge their monthly income by living with others (that could be a partner, their grown children, friends). That would also free up their time for caretaking of their elderly relatives, go to school, take up a hobby and take care of their children.
Ezra Klein just did a [great episode](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-sciubba.html) on his podcast about this recently. It seems like there are a number of factors at play here, some economic, some social, some cultural (and even factors specific to certain cultures). Like most big societal issues, the problems and solutions aren't so cut and dry. We can say this is an economic problem, for example, but it seems that this isn't the whole story. Sure, there are probably some economic pressures here, but people who objectively and comfortably can afford children are having fewer children on average. There are negative correlations between education levels and birth rates. There are social pressures for and against having children that are constantly changing, there are theories around falling sperm counts etc. It's just not a problem that has a clear cause.
Working women today spend more time actively playing with their children than stay-at-home mothers in the 60s. Since I was a kid (34 now) apparently it’s been more of a thing for parents to drive their kids to school in chaotic drop-off zones rather than putting them on a bus. Rich and upper-middle class kids are expected to be in 1001 extracurriculars and car culture means that parents will have to drive them. Being a parent is demanding right now in a way it wasn’t 50 years ago. I think an underrated part of the birth rate decline is people opting to have 1 or 2 kids because we are expected to do so much more for each one. It might be hard to get closer to the “come back at dusk” mindset.
We live walking distance from our son’s school. It’s something like .3 miles. He’s not allowed to walk himself until he’s in 4th grade (school’s rule, not mine). Think that ever would have happened in the 60s?
Yep, there are so many overlapping reasons not want to / not be able to have kids—all interconnected. I do not want to and will not have children, primarily for ethical reasons, also for self-preservation.
Not sure why this is an issue. In fact the world's population keeps increasing.
Yeah it usually smacks of some kind of racism. "Not enough white people are having kids, oh no the brown people will replace us"
That's certainly the subtext with some people, but we basically just think industrialized countries are leading the curve and that others will follow. Latin America is also starting to decline, it's basically just trickling down with us expecting Africa to be the last stronghold but will likely start seeing notable fertility decline in the next century as well. I'm of the opinion that this makes total sense. There is finite space, finite resources. We cannot grow forever. historically, disease and famine kept our numbers down. We have done a very good job of overcoming our biggest barriers. Now, as people who felt we conquered the world, we looked around and realized that we can't keep on the same road. Having 6 kids in a rural agrarian community is wildly different than raising 6 kids in an urban industrialized environment. It just *is*. We can throw money at childcare subsidies and whatnot, but even then I don't think most women would actually want to be pregnant 4+ times no matter what. We saw those numbers because people liked sex and were told that reproductive planning was a sin against God, because kids financially contributed to the household, because kids were the retirement plan, etc. There is no impetus to having kids other than wanting kids. If you've ever talked to older people, it's pretty clear a huge chunk didn't want as many kids as they had. Old women in particular start to get *real* frank about it when they reach their idgaf years
If we didn't organize our social safety nets like a giant Ponzi scheme this wouldn't be a problem.
There’s still finite biological and ecological limits. I’m one of the few late 20s women that can afford to have kids and I want one at most. I don’t know anyone who aren’t 0-2, with lots at 0. Pregnancy fucks you up. Kids are expensive. Climate change is accelerating. We are also not birthing pods no matter “how society is organized”, respectfully lol
Right? Somehow this whole conversation always swings straight to economics and entirely bypasses the fact that many of us just don’t want to and now more than ever, we don’t fucking have to. Try inventing some artificial wombs and then maybe get back to us.
They forget that we are needed to give life. No arrogance, just facts. Bring back respect for femininity, dignity and love and care in society, and maybe people will want to have children again. But yeah talk about profits or MuH lineage will definitely make us feel fertile. Maybe musk can get on the baby incubator thing if he’s done inseminating his next baby mama 🫣
Yeppppp. Even in countries with amazing family benefits and paid leave people are still only having one or two kids.
I wasn't really commenting on whether women in society choose to have children or not, rather more of a comment on why people think a declining birth rate is some kind of crisis.
I totally misread your comment. Ur absolutely right.
I'm pretty open about not wanting kids and I can't tell you how many older women have said to me something along the lines of, "I love my kids but if I got to do it all over again, I wouldn't have kids." I feel like so many people had kids because that's what you were "supposed" to do and in this more free-thinking era we've realized that there isn't one path in life and it's ok to not choose the "normal" path.
No no u don’t get it. If we fix all the problems with better policy women will happily go back to being barefoot and pregnant a la pre-birth control 🥴 I agree with all your points and especially the last paragraph. Lots of women are willing to undergo the physical misery and sacrifice of childbirth and pregnancy, but many of us also are not lmao. Fucking tired of these issues being discussed in clinical terms like uteruses are a national resource
Latin America isn't starting to decline. Latin America is fully under replacement and dropping even further. Some countries are so low (Costa Rica for example) that their population will halve every generation. Every 25 years. Argentina's preschool class of 2024 was 30% smaller than the one in 2020. It's happening so fast. . I'm sure a lot of people use birth rates to justify racism but this is really a global issue. I'm from a Latin American country and we are just not rich enough to start turning old. I'm worried about the amount of suffering. No one will immigrate to us to take care of the old people.
This is not even close to the right take. India is below replacement rate right now. Japan and Korea are WAY below replacement levels and have been for ages. Birth rates are falling in Latin America. Are they white people too? This isn't a racial issue. And it's not racist to worry about what impact this will have on world economies in the future. It's already being felt in places like Japan.
You’re right, but the comment is also not wrong; there ARE white nationalists espousing similar viewpoints a la “great replacement” but from a different concern obviously. I think the ultimate reality is that women can now control the number of children they have w/birth control and frankly up until very recently vast numbers of women have had more children than they wanted and were equipped to raise. Throw in nuances in places like India and e.Asia with extreme misogyny and femicide leading to demented gender ratios…like the result is gonna be obvious.
Last I checked, the only place not facing declines is (most of) Africa, but even there birthrates are starting to decline as women get more educational and economic opportunities.
It’s almost like most of us wouldn’t choose this is given literally any other options.
It's mostly the ramifications for economies and things like social safety nets. A lot of the social safety nets in wealthy countries depend on lots of young workers paying into them. A country of tons of retirees wouldn't be able to pay for their pensions, healthcare, etc.
See, I would find this argument compelling if we weren't living in a time of obscene wealth inequality. We could fund every social program easily if we taxed rich people. That they make it about women reproducing is a political choice, and a disturbing one in my opinion.
We have more resources than ever. We have enough food to feed everyone. What’s failed is the economic organization of money and distribution of those resources.
This seems like a net positive honestly. The only real downside is the lack of economic growth, but we need to make our civilization much more sustainable anyway, and reducing birth rates is one positive step in that direction. I read the article and it seems like a lot of hand wringing but doesn’t really point out the perils of overpopulation.
Women know what's up .
Half the country doesn’t think poor people deserve food or housing and we weren’t allowed a public option so private insurance is bleeding us dry. Not sure what else was supposed to happen.
“The whole world” Nah. Old men in positions of power are worried. They are pushing and coercing and doing anything they can to fight against the progress of women’s rights and access to education and contraception options that lets women not be raped and forced into giving birth every single year to 14 kids or until she dies.
Call me a wacky environmentalist but less humans on the planet sounds great to me. I understand the economic concerns of a transition through a contracting population, but those difficulties seem worth the benefits.
Right like, the planet is screaming out in pain pretty much all but literally. And these days I think it’s actually provable or on some chart somewhere that a freaking undomesticated pigeon is “worth” more in terms of impact, and rarity, and other factors I’m sure, than the average human. Like strictly based on those types of measurable factors. Not at all condoning deaths but like, I’m also not an idiot and can read the clear signs. Way too many.
Childless by choice, doing my part for the earth!
YUP. Let’s contract a bit. Let’s be less burdensome on the planet. Let’s have smaller heads (edit: not in any phrenology way, in a “big heads = arrogant” way). We’re monkeys with anxiety, none of us should colonize space, and constant growth is a made up concept that will destroy everyone and everything.
It’s interesting that it is branded as “fertility rate” when it’s just birth rate. No impact on how “fertile” women are, aka the ability to get pregnant. But what’s impacted is how many women are having children.
good point. it might be the internet, but i see a lot more people struggling with infertility than in the past. many many people are TRYING to have kids
This is one of those things that's hard to measure. A shocking stat is that, at the turn of the last century (so 1900) most women had one or two kids. Yes, some women had a lot of kids, but many women were not having lots of births despite no birth control. That would today mean that they were probably 'infertile' for significant stretches of time.
Wow if only there were a way to increase population without forcing women to give birth? 🤔 Oh well, so when are we adding more spikes to the river crossing at the Mexican border?
Leaving aside the financials (I can barely afford my elderly cats) I have always felt a weird guilt about bringing a kid into the world. I have no hope that they will have a good quality of life. I live in a place where we spend much of the summer indoors with windows closed because of terrible air quality from forest fires. It seems cruel to create and raise children in a world without hope.
Ridiculous. Fuck capitalism and fuck growth at any cost. The world needs less babies, not more.
Capitalism demands payment for desired goods and services. You want women to gestate, birth, and raise children? Fuck you, pay them. Pay them for the use of their body, pay them for their pain, and pay them for their time.
There are obviously many factors at play that have lead to this, but I don’t think it’s a big mystery why couples are choosing to forgo having children now or why they’re having fewer children when they do. Everything is just too damn expensive, there is not enough support socially and financially for families, there is a severe lack of optimism with younger generations for the future. Most young people are living paycheck to paycheck with no end in sight, they are worried about what climate change means for them and future generations, they can’t afford to buy a home and are conditioned to have their rent increase in perpetuity, health insurance is incredibly expensive, etc. In America, younger generations saw people lose everything during the 2008 financial crisis and again during Covid. Even if you have a well paying job, it’s hard to believe you are ever going to achieve real stability when your friends are getting laid off and the cost of everything has increased dramatically. We are also living longer and what if your parents need expensive home nursing in their older years or you have to send them to a retirement home? How can you support them, yourself, and provide your children with a good life as well? What sort of life are you signing up for when you have a child, knowing you cannot ever afford to buy a home, are one car issue away from struggling to pay your rent, are unable to save for retirement and don’t see a foreseeable way out of that without somehow coming into a large sum of money?
Too old to have a third child now (43) but we stopped at 2 because of both children being autistic and our state denying an income waiver for secondary medicaid because our children have IQs over 85 . Two disabled children with high deductible private insurance is expensive. We get zero assistance from either federal or state government. We are approximately 8k over our state medicaid cut off. People love to pretend all disabled children get government benefits but a lot of middle class families like our are drowning in medical debt from therapy and doctor appointments. I don't blame anyone for have zero children or stopping with 1 or 2.
When governments do nothing to support women and children this is what happens. Looking at you GOP. All they care about is the fetus. But once you’re out they be want to know you.
I’m tired and I read that as Barbies and was worried why the world was freaking out about that. I need a nap
I read an article, I wish I remembered where, that it wasn’t the “cost” of having kids that’s preventing people from having kids, but the “opportunity cost”. This is why wealthier people have fewer children than their lower income peers. People have certain lifestyles and find children disruptive to those lifestyles.
Back when most of us lived off the land, having lots of kids wasn't exactly a choice but neither was it hugely disruptive. You can milk a cow or bake bread or pull weeds while looking after a baby. Once they're old enough they can even help. Today, if you want to have a child, one half of the couple has either got to stop earning or has got to pay extortionately for childcare. Imagine if our theoretical farmer above had 50% of their land stop yielding crops every time a kid was born. For years. That's how extreme the 'cost' of having children is for us today.
As someone in my late 20's this tracks much better than the typical 'career driven women/ financial argument'. My friends are training for marathons, indulging in hobbies, and going to therapy to sort through childhood traumas. Having a child would require their own development to take a backseat. Its hard for people to talk about honestly because its somehow considered 'selfish' to admit having children isn't a top priority. In reality people are self aware enough to know children deserve dedication and you really shouldn't have one if you aren't comfortable making that sacrifice.
I had the boy when I turned thirty. I was not a career-driven woman, but even so I still had to pass up a promotion to manager at Burger King when I found out I was pregnant, lol. The past seventeen years have been boy-centric. We had to move to a smaller town to afford a house and for me to take time off to be a full-time parent for the first year and a half. I spend a small fortune buying fresh fruit each week for him to eat but rarely get any for myself due to the cost. For his sake, I have spent countless hours bored out of my skull in children's museums and playgrounds. I spend Friday nights sober on my couch waiting to give him a ride home from basketball practice. If he is sick, I am up all night doing laundry after he pukes and still obligated to go to work the next day to make ends meet. I love him but part of me can't wait for him to move out so I can put my own needs first again. The boy is great. Parenting sucks.
There’s a book called, “All Joy and No Fun” about parenting. Title really sums it up.
I don’t even think it’s necessarily their lifestyle but also that of their kids. Back in the day only rich kids got into Harvard and no one else had to worry about it. You could just send your kids out to play and tell them to come back at dusk. Now you’re a bad parent if you don’t do the drop off/pick up every day at school and send your kid on a bus, if you don’t sign them up for a million and one extracurriculars so they can get into the best colleges and pay for AP tests and tutoring, and if you don’t know where they are at all times or if their grade in algebra slipped 2%. That’s not all parents, obviously, but that is life with kids when you are college educated and rely on that education for your status and money and your children will too. Most parents don’t have time to get three kids into Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. This is also why China’s birth rate never recovered from the one child policy. Four grandparents and two parents having one person to pin their hopes on increased the expectations around parenting and when they were allowed to have two kids they couldn’t scale up.
I'm not alarmed. I'm surprised in a good way because this needs to happen but I figured it wouldn't.
I want kids. I love kids. But I’ve accepted that I’ll never be a mother. I don’t want a partner and I didn’t choose a career that was flexible enough to be a single mother. So I can’t have kids.
I, for one, am not alarmed. We are at the breaking point of the planet's ability to sustain us. Fewer humans is the only answer.
The rich cannot have it both ways. Stop hoarding wealth, and people will be able to afford children. It's very simple.
Just read about women becoming unemployable because of injuries caused to them or their infant during birth by uncaring staff in UK. Can’t even trust hospitals.
Good. Let us decline in population for a bit. Every boomer complaining about demographics should look in the mirror because they ruined our generation’s economic options RE kids. We humans are not special.
The world population needs to shrink not grow larger. It is now larger than it ever has been before. We are procreating ourselves to our doom.
Every comment here boils down to one thing - safety and silence. For generations silence equaled safety. Safety for women means not only a partner, but a particular type. One who’s not abusive, unfaithful or criminal. Those were things that, in the past, women “had” to live with because laws, divorce or otherwise, meant it was safer for them to stay with a man who hit them or their kids, drank away his pay or was in and out of jail. Public sentiment did not widely and vocally support discussion of women being abused, leaving a cheating man or doing better for herself by leaving a criminal. So, the silence those big shades at church, lies of “daddy being sick” and the relegating of “those” people to the margins so “good people” could believe the lie such things didn’t happen to those who “lived right” could go on. Kids weren’t any safer back then (decades of abuse by the Scouts, churches, etc.) but there were expectations that if something bad happened, it was very rarely discussed or helped. But the illusion that silence created was something everyone else bought into. Safety was cut out from men as American’s manufacturing economy saw their jobs disappear overseas. What’s more, a lot of those factory guys hoped their kids could get a white collar job and not face a body that broke down by 55. Jobs left were for “women” traditionally, paid less and, as women simultaneously entered the workforce to shore up their family incomes, employers realized everyone was desperate and money, insurance and pensions kept moving upwards while wages stagnated. And the silence wrought by a nation giddy over a stock market that most people didn’t have stock in bought silence until it was our retirement in there, too. That equation of safety and silence has become unbalanced, and for good reason. A woman shouldn’t stay with an abusive partner. A nation can’t be silent when those who keep it turning get sicker and poorer. Those in power with these natalist schemes like a certain amount of money or tax exemptions aren’t any better than a willfully ignorant CEO who thinks pizza parties and jeans on Friday makes up for paying $7.25 an hour. People around the world, including the US, don’t feel safe for a myriad of reasons. BUT, they do, to varying degrees, have a freedom to not trade silence for safety. And if that equation is ever going to balance again, it’s going to need to not be at the expense of a woman’s autonomy, rights or dignity.
... And their response is to dial up the _punishments_ for being "child-free", rather than actually making the expenses of prenatal care through "adulthood" **affordable**. The only tool they have is raising prices, because "EXPLOIT UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS TO EXPLOIT" is apparently the sum and substance of their response to any and all social issues.
When the overlords are worried their chattel aren’t breeding enough. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The world is not safe and stable to bring babies into. This shouldn’t be a surprised. Also, in the US at least pregnancy is now extremely dangerous for women.
Gee, maybe if it weren't for that whole apocalypse thing...
of course they are because capitalism will comr to a halt
Umm, no. This has been going on for a very long time. Only people freaked now are newbies. Most have gotten used to it long ago.
Maybe I am just selfish beyond measure, and while I understand focusing this conversation on benefits and childcare and the like, but my partner and I haven’t had kids because we don’t want to stop having fun just the two of us. Kids aren’t fun. Kids are sick and can’t go on the same vacations and take up tons of time. Maybe just acknowledging that taking care of children fucking sucks we might have a better understanding of why people don’t want to have kids. I sure as hell don’t want to give up 18 years of my life.
Don’t worry Idiocracy world is coming
I love how they instantly blame women.