It’s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.
For years, some conservatives have framed the declining fertility rate of the United States as an example of eroding family values, a moral catastrophe in slow motion.
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, recently came under fire for saying in 2021 that the nation was run by “childless cat ladies” who “hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.”
Last year, Ashley St. Clair, a Fox News commentator, described childless Americans this way: “They just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts. It’s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.”
Researchers who study trends in reproductive health see a more nuanced picture. The decision to forgo having children is most likely not a sign that Americans are becoming more hedonistic, they say. For one thing, fertility rates are declining throughout the developed world.
Rather, it indicates that larger societal factors — such as rising child care costs, increasingly expensive housing and slipping optimism about the future — have made it feel more untenable to raise children in the United States.
It’s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.
Well, of course it’s not selfishness. Having children is a purely selfish act, because who else are you reproducing for? You can’t do something for someone that doesn’t exist, and bringing existence to someone who hasn’t asked for it, knowing what the world looks like, doesn’t strike me as a kindness. So who else is benefiting? The capitalist machine?
But the world really needs another little copy of me running around because I’m so unique and wonderful! /s
Well, I mean SOME people have to reproduce at least…
The corporations need more worker meat for the grinder! How dare you selfishly keep that from them!
The mines are yearning for the children
What about “I just don’t want one.” is that not a legitimate line of thought? That was what I based my decision on. I have never understood why the default state was marriage and then have a family. I can tell you that me and my childless wife are family.
I agree. The opening line is an insult to me. Why would choosing not to have children be selfish? Forcing someone to live a whole ass life because you want a family is the selfish thing to do, not the other way around.
Agreed, I don’t know why people don’t understand that “I don’t want one” is a completely legitimate reason to not have one by itself. Add to that any level of depth you’d like to choose from financial, climate or political reasons to there just being too many people in the world already and it further legitimizes it, but “I just don’t want one” is and should be completely valid on its own.
Many people simply don’t understand the idea of not wanting one. I moved to a more conservative area shortly before I got married, and after I got married I got all the usual questions about kids to which I replied “lol no”. Then I was asked why I even got married. Bro, if I wanted kids, I’d have them and I don’t need to get married to do it.
The main question seems to be why is the birth rate declining. Presumably people not wanting kids have existed during all times. But even if we assume that there are more people per capita who don’t want kids, the question persists, why is that the case, and how much of the decline is attributable to it.
When women were almost always home makers, children were how they’d find fulfillment. Now they can have fulfillment from working careers. At least, this is one of the main reasons I’ve heard about long standing trends in birth rate decline. They predict that the human population on earth will peak between 11 and 12 billion and kind of just stay there.
This causes panic because Capitalism demands that everything must continue to grow, eternally.
I bet if the billionaires shared just a bit more we could afford to have more kids and they wouldn’t be looking at their labor force drying up…
No… that couldn’t be it.
/s
There’s the option of importing cheap workforce. It has been tried before… /s
You forgot to add… While that imported labour is scared they will get deported so they don’t complain they are underpaid or taken advantage of. Just how the corporation’s want it
I just downloaded the raw data from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN and ploted it in this graph for the countries I was interested in:
The USA is - according to the data - nothing special in this regard. It’s even positioned best of all the countries with the flattest downwards curve. Just look at South Korea :D
South Korea is also an interesting one because, IIRC, it’s currently in the middle of a social upheaval over the treatment of women and there is a movement to avoid dating/relationships in general amongst younger women.
I wonder how much of this is caused by microplastics in testicles?
Probably very little because most of them who want children can get help by modern medicine.
Because children are expensive, a ton of work, and the world is dying.
Pick one or all.
weird how all those tax cuts for rich people lead to them going on real estate purchasing sprees, making housing unaffordable
Meanwhile the rest of us pay more in taxes
Bruh I can’t afford to support myself let alone more mouths to feed. Children lol
I see two issues here. One is how expensive shit is. Having their own kids is the least of my kids’ concerns for their future. They are concentrating on being able to afford to leave the house after college, and start their own lives. When it is so hard for young people to start out, they’re not going to be motivated to have kids unless it’s forced upon them…
… which brings me to my second point:
“I want a baby boom!” [Trump] told a crowd of supporters. “You men are so lucky out there.”
Men these days are super cringey. Half the country views Trump as the Alpha Male, a serial sexual predator. Politicians (who are predominately white and male) are all up in women’s business about their fertility. Is it any wonder why so many young women identify as non-straight these days? And why the traditional gender roles hold no appeal for them? Women have been getting the short end of the stick for millenia, and it’s only recently where they have had enough agency to not participate if they are not being treated well.
You want women to have more babies? Stop treating them like shit, and manage the costs of everything so that having kids isn’t an economic death sentence.
Is it any wonder why so many young women identify as non-straight these days?
Doesn’t this imply they would be straight if men acted differently? I’m not sure a mass version of the “oh she’s not really a lesbian, she just hasn’t met the right man” thing is really the answer here
I don’t think that you meant to imply this and the rest of your comment seems reasonable to me. That bit just stuck out
You’re right, I’m looking for the right phrasing here.
It’s not that these kids who identify as queer are temporarily embarrassed straight people who haven’t found their soul mates. But if you are a young woman these days, and all the men you encounter are incel brats, it’s quite easy to decide you want nothing to do with them. Women can do just fine on their own now, they don’t need a man for validation. Some of them might discover that, for them, sexuality is a spectrum, and they’ll be fine either way, but if all the men they encounter don’t respect them then that leads them in the other direction. Does that mean they would be 100% straight if they found a man who was compatible? They may not feel that way, but very few external observers would describe a woman who is with a man as anything other than “straight”.
What I’m trying to do is point out that all of these self-described “Alpha Males” who complain about the fertility rate are themselves the problem, because they are so insufferable that women would rather be with anyone else than with them.
You want women to have more babies? Stop treating them like shit
Nope. They want to treat women like shit and still force them to have babies. Once their female children are 12/13, they also want to marry them.
I am quite sure that a Trump presidency would empower the Supreme Court to allow child marriage.
Who are these articles for?
Because it’s been the same reasons for a decade and the idiots who keep asking still aren’t reading them.
Boomers who just don’t get it
Looking at some families around me, I would say it’s Boomers that are estranged from their own children and hope grandchildren will somehow fix that. And they are not completely wrong, as having children is such a bad economic proposition that it basically forces people to come back and beg their parents for support, but it’s all very one sided… typical Boomer mindset.
Did you just summarized the first episode of Gilmore Girl? 😉
Well, that’s probably why the show is popular 🤷♂️
Capitalists who need a new generation of workers to exploit.
Bank accounts are empty, and the air is full of smoke.
the car’s on fire
and there’s no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blowsNGL, line 3 looking more appealing every day.
We are trapped in the belly of the beast, and the beast is starving to death.
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Half of all Americans have less than $500
4 out of 5 Americans have less than $5000.
Cheap diapers are 50c each and you need a minimum of 5 a day, more often 10, so half of all Americans cannot afford one month of basic child care(diapers, food, checkups)
1 out of 5 Americans have enough money to pay for the bare essentials so a baby can survive for more than a couple months.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/how-much-money-americans-have-in-savings.html
gestures broadly
I love how the Republicans are blaming societal causes when in reality it’s because of fucked up a economy due to businesses price gouging the fuck out of everyone while also not paying employees a living wage, not giving raises to keep up with inflation, and more economic certainty. They don’t realize that not everyone is rich like they are. lmao
They know. They want a desperate and exploitable peasantry.
remember when the 40hrs week made sense? gradpa could feed a family, have the life depicted in The Simpsons. that time is long gone and everybody too scared to change anything.
Why have a child so they can grow up to fight in the water wars or die of famine during ecological collapse?
I guess they dont see the the sin of knowingly condemning someone to that life. People should only have children if they are confident they can offer them stable lives.
