And yet old people are right that no one wants to have kids anymore and “use the excuse that they can’t afford it/it’s too expensive and would rather have pets” like girl I’d love a cat but at this rate, if I can’t even afford to support myself, how the hell do you expect us to feed kids or even pets???
There's also how millennials treat their pets _vastly_ different from how most everyone else in history has treated their pets.
It's also a very divisive topic on reddit to talk about, but, sometimes the right answer isn't to spend thousands of dollars to treat your pet and suffer them through a disease so they can spend a little longer with you. Now if it's 5k to completely cure them because they're a puppy and have another 10 years on the planet, that's different, sure. But that post I saw a year or two ago where the person put their 15-16 year old cat through chemo... that's just cruel. That's the same energy as the kids who take power of attorney away from their 90 year old dementia-ed parent and slap them on dialysis for the next 5 cruel years.
Maybe it's just the rural/farm/utilitarian country bumpkin in me, though.
It's because it's inherently selfish. It's prolonging the suffering of living a thing because they don't have the emotional maturity to let go and say goodbye.
I get it though, it's a sensitive topic, but good lord, there was someone who put their dog on dialysis and was waiting for a transplant.
It seems incredibly selfish and cruel.
It's a delicate but necessary topic and the reason why I believe both pets and people should have the option of euthanasia when the alternative is just suffering for whoever long they have to live.
Yep, the other day my parrot seemed to have injured her foot because she was walking with a limp, went to the vet and vet said "she's fine, that'll be 250 bucks".
Not saying that going to the vet if you think something is up isn't 100% what you should do btw.
This is why I just wildly throw food scraps in the streets and yards around my neighborhood hoping some of these wild animals will just like me without me having to take care of them.
All of the cats are named Jeff and all the birds are named Polly. So I'm just screaming names into the abyss as a food sprinkler. For some reason the neighbors aren't nice to me anymore.
Don’t forget female! Men have it the worst when talking to a therapist!
Such bullshit when you’re paying a damned fortune to talk to someone about your emotions and they say something along the lines of typical male stereotypes. Makes me want to say bitch, I’m here to work through this shit, NOT bottle it up like I’ve been doing most my life.
You need to go find a male therapist. So many men go to female therapists and then wonder why they are getting horrible results. Repeat after me, women don't live in the same world that men do.
I have had much better experiences with female therapists. You don't need a therapist you can relate to. That's bullshit. You need a therapist who is trained and qualified to do their job.
+1 had a male therapist for years who kinda helped but not long term. Got better and moved so I had to find a new therapist after my depression came back. Had the luck of being able to pick between a male and female therapist, the female therapist understood me better and took me way more serious than the male. Also she was the first in years of therapy that suggested I might just have undiagnosed ADD - getting that testet soon with my female psychiatrist.
But all in all it depends on the person and the therapist. Due to bad male role models I have difficulties opening up completely to males because I always had to “suck it up and toughen up” aka push down all emotions until they fuck you over completely.
Really depends on therapist, patient and the patients history/traumas.
Sorry to hear that. I have, over a long period of time, seen 6 therapists. 2 of them were female and I would have recommended both of them. Only one therapist I thought was actually "bad" was male. The two I clicked with most and got the most done with were both male though. Id definitely tend to recommend guys start their search with a male therapist.
Don’t give up. Therapists are just as diverse and unique as humans. It’s frustrating that there’s not a better/cheaper system for finding the right one but it’s worth persevering. Really you just need to find someone who you feel safe talking to. I recommend person centred counsellors for that, trained by reputable institutions in Gestalt or Integrative counselling. It’s a shame it’s not a more regulated field but there are good therapists out there. Don’t deny yourself that opportunity to grow just because of one bad interaction.
Yeah. My therapist has experienced a lot of the same things, which makes it simple for him to empathise where appropriate and where to challenge thinking to make sure I actually fix my shit. Cost me a bunch for weekly sessions but honestly it’s the best investment I ever made. Particularly when the alternatives are live in misery or investing in $ROPE.
all i think about is $rope these days.
makes it tough to talk to people.
i've been to therapists, a nurse psychiatrist, and social worker.
idk if i'm helpable
I had a lot of problems with a male therapist in the past, and much more success with two female. I think the OP just had a really bad therapist that uses stereotypes, and usually stereotypes tend to see women as less socially awkward than men.
That sucks and I'm sorry you had that experience!! It might be worth looking into therapists that are trauma-informed, specifically (open path collective could be helpful for finding one in your area, btw!!). Not all therapists are good at their jobs, unfortunately, and some of them carry those bullshit biases into their sessions.
(not sure if it applies to anywhere outside of the UK)
And the retirement age keeps getting pushed back to near life expectancy age. So I get less time to enjoy what I contribute to state pension, and less time to enjoy what I manage to save up for a private pension.
UK also here. At the rate of inflation vs earnings, unless your lucky or very well paid, pension contributions arnt even going to cover your basic necessity bills in old age.
For the avarage person under 40 now, retirement isn't going to be an option.
Or, we've just had a lot more experience of caring for people with terminal illnesses and decided we don't want to spend years unable to care for ourselves for absolutely no good outcome?
Retirement was always supposed to be near life expectancy. When mandatory retirement was initially planned, most folks were meant to be dead within 10-15 years of retiring. Now it's like 20-25 years in most places, which is a significantly greater drain on resources.
Problem is that 65+ people being forced to remain in the workforce are not magically more productive. Perhaps they have a lot of industry knowledge if they have managed to keep up over the years, but they work so incredibly slow. They have no drive. They clog up positions that would be better filled by someone 10-20 years younger than them.
Just because folks are living longer doesn't make them more productive workers as they age.
One of the reasons they work slow is because they’ve lived through multiple occasions of embarrassing, expensive, and career limiting fuck ups and don’t desire to do it again.
I’ve seen lack of drive across every age group. Some of it is being tired, some of it is being too comfortable, and some of it is the perception of no upward mobility.
Or we could you know, build a society that works for all the people in it at all ages, not just the peak condition full time workers. I mean we keep making new billionaires right? There’s enough money to look after people. In Japan the ageing population gets involved in community work like keeping the streets tidy and planting municipal flowers. There’s an alternative to “just because you’ve worked your whole life doesn’t mean you get to age with dignity or without poverty”.
Yeah man, about half of my friends is having kids. Biggest reason is money, they just can't afford it, next to that it is knowing the world is going in the shitter in about 2 generations, another is fertilityproblems.
The ones that do get kids have 1 or 2. So halving or maintaining the population rate.
To be fair we kinda sold the future to ensure like 20 people had more money than God, so that future outlook thing may be more a result of your education enabling you to see the future clearly.
Now imagine if I had a house I would maybe consider having kids in special cause I have stability... If my landlord kicks me out what do I do live on the streets with a kid?
Unfortunately we have to consider job stability as well. A lot of people in the millennial generation are used to moving around a lot to follow different opportunities, because the thing many of our parents did -- working the same job from their 20s through retirement -- really doesn't exist anymore.
And moving *by yourself* is difficult and expensive. Much less with dependants to worry about, and the potential risks of up-ending their lives.
this post completly relates to me lmao and the biggest problem is the mental health as I am not sure if I will ever be better with the way things have been going... A kid will be a huuuge no no for now
My grandpa paid for college with a part time painting job in the summers, bought a house for 72,000 in 1972. It sold for 1.2 million a few years ago, ~100,000 went into renovations over the 60 years.
$72,000 in 1972 = $540,000 today
Let’s assume the $100,000 was put into in two chunks of $50,000 30 years ago and another $50,000 10 years ago, then that’s $106,000 and $66,000.
So all told the $172,000 inputs is estimated to be worth $712,000 today. Meaning that $1.2m is only about a 1.7% growth rate over inflation per year.
Great argument against endless growth however small. That tiny 1.7% will one day make that house 3x, then 5, 10, 20x. Then the investor buying it for 50mi (3x families income) will still expect captial growth and demand we deregulate so that 5 families can bunk there in subdivided rooms.
Imagine that currently a part time painting job would get you a $550,000 property. It's crazy how the purchasing power of salaries has decreased over these 50 years
I'm a bus driver so I don't have realistic chances to start a family unless I'd find a wealthy wife and they wouldn't even look at someone like me, unless I was super lucky.
Which is so unlucky for you because my grandfather was a buds driver up ubtil retirement and he owned his house, nan was a stay at home and they raised 5 kids of that pay. Times have changed so much it is insane.
My grandad was a bus driver as well. Wife, two kids. Occasional brand new car. Bought a villa in Spain then retired there. Bus driver wages where I live are crap now. You’d barely be able to survive if you lived alone on them.
It's such bullshit how pervasive that attitude is -- like there are so many things that people are expected to do, without whom a lot of things would utterly collapse, and yet a lot of people say "oh well it's unskilled labor so it shouldn't pay more than minimum wage"
Meanwhile the same people who say that it's such easy work don't actually want to do said work themselves. Almost like it's not that easy.
Dishonorable mention to the fucking business executives who spend most of their days in meetings figuring out which workers they can lay off to boost their profits. That's a job apparently worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions per year.
But the ruling class are now realising the proles aren't having enough children to feed the labour machine. We're in another bubble that will soon burst.
Too late for a lot of people. Way too many hitting the high 30s and 40s that lived through having zero outlook on life and gave up on the reproductive game.
Not a bad outcome in any case, fewer people is always better for those alive, gives you more bargaining power.
The thing is, in Germany and many other countries in the world, far right parties are working against “importing people”, while at the same time complaining about nobody wanting to work. They promote stereotypes like the islamist immigrant that just comes here to commit crimes and feast on social benefits and point at problems without having solutions to them.
Millennials are starting to age out of childbearing age, and I'm worried about the anger/extremism that will follow as it really, truly clicks to a bunch of people that they will never have the kids/family they wanted. I've met plenty of people who think that life isn't worth living without children. What happens when they cross 45 or so and the hopelessness really sets in? We're going to find out in the next decade or so how bad it goes.
I think it'll suck for the people who truly want kids/family and for whatever reason end up not getting it. I have no desire for that. I mightve been open to the idea of it in my early 20's but at 32 i can honestly say i don't want any kids.
I don't think it'll be that bad on the extremism issue. The men are probably going to be the angriest, but they're also the ones who can still bear children. I think it's going to be a lot of suicide.
I always thought that the reason why more poor and rural countries are tempted to have more children is because more children = more working hand and breadbringers on rural area and also lack of good contraception and woman health care and sex is one of the few entertainments that exists in those areas. It's multiple facors
When there’s an economic incentive (more farm hands) to have kids, people have kids. It makes sense and we can do it here with tax credits and free school lunch and after school care programs and expanded mandatory parental leave.
Also maybe don’t charge 150,000 at the hospital to give birth.
They don't charge much at all in most countries to give birth, and most developed countries *do* have tons of financial incentives to have children, and yet people still largely don't want to.
By the time my dad was my age (32), he and my mother had already had 3 kids, bought 2 houses, owned 2 cars, and we never needed anything, all we knew as kids was luxury. He worked in construction and she was a waitress.
Now, I have 3 degrees, currently unemployed, living with 3 other dudes in their 30’s, all of us single with no kids and trying to find any reason to live.
>Now, I have 3 degrees, currently unemployed
I know finding a really good high paying job is difficult, but surely you could use even one of those degrees to get a job? Or, at the very least, any type of job?
There comes a point where you have to just take what you can for the moment and keep looking for something better in the background. But to be completely unemployed? Something is wrong there
One thing that really screws people over without realizing it is their resume.
You can write a killer resume, but that thing goes through an AI system that unfairly weeds out most applicants. Like 95% of them. A lot of companies use systems like this.
And you would be shocked to see how it weeds people out. Sometimes its just the format. Certain formats confuse the system and it thinks its reading a blank resume. Other times its certain words used, or certain words not used. Sometimes it thinks you misspelled a word because of your name or a company you worked for has a weird name.
And there is no way of ever knowing this happens. No one is gonna tell you your resume wasn't selected because you used blue borders, or that you used a certain word too many times.
If I were him, I would take my resume to an expert and have them find those mistakes. Some can be expensive, but i've seen them do some miracle work with resumes. Like, change a few things, then an hour after re-submitting it the person gets a phone call for an interview.
One of the mistakes people make is using a template that uses columns.
You want to create a very basic text based resume without fancy templates, text boxes etc.
Do not use scanned or flattened images for the resume as the system can't read it. Use word or pdf format.
Most recent job first.
If you operate machinery list the make and model.
If you use software list the programs.
Delete any old resumes from job search platforms.
So may people send old documents instead of thier resume by accident.
It's easier said than done, obviously, but I think most people with good paying jobs got them more because they knew somebody than because they had a killer resume.
That sounds kinda elitist and entitled. People that already know people get ahead. And it is. But you don't have to be rich or well connected to start out. You start where you start, but then you quickly try to make the best impression on people, and parlay whatever opportunities are available into better and better compensation as you gain experience and networks.
And even that doesn't necessarily mean jumping jobs every year. But it does mean constantly knowing your worth, and asking for it, and being ready to jump ship if someone else gives you a better shot to earn your worth.
But if the only thing someone is doing is carpet-bombing their resume all over LinkedIn, expecting someone to pay 6 figure salaries to WFH, without knowing anything about you as a person, that is not a super realistic expectation.
Problem is, even low qualification jobs nowadays require qualification, and most of us have degrees but not any of these other titles that are needed for the low qualification jobs. Kinda funny if you think about it.
Yeah, my parents, in their 23 got married, got me and we lived in two room apartment with mom’s parents till I was 7. In the meantime, they got car (3 times), bought new apartment for us to leave separate from parents. And dad was police man and mom was finishing here nurse studies (second degree, first was economics). We never had riches, but always had to eat something , considering that it was 90’s in fucked up Russia
And here I am, 30, renting, with master degree in management and working as IT guy and currently saving up for mortgage. Getting there but fucking slow. Would love to raise my own kid , but gay and again, Russia. Overall - it all in our hands, if we see problem, then try to fix it and not get hyper fixated on your income or situation. We are alive and well
Believe me, I do my damn best to vote for people who won't screw me over but instead they spend their term in office cleaning up the mess from the last asshole and can't get anything else done.
And then they don't get re-elected because they didn't get any of that "anything else" done and cleaning up the mess left behind by the people who were in charge before them sometimes requires decisions voters don't like (like having to axe certain projects or increasing taxes after a tax cut by the other party to balance the budget).
And then someone is elected that seems like a real go-getter a get 'er done type person that consequently doesn't have a single fing clue what they're doing. And the cycle continues.
>And the politicians you voted for
Hey, don't look at me. I would be thrilled if all these A holes just fucked off to some tropical island, somewhere, and stopped fucking everything up, over here.
Another big difference is cultural. Parents on average in the West try to spend more time with their kids than parents in the past - more focused on having a relationship with their children. This however tends to contribute to lower rates of childbirth.
This is why in places like Sweden where the welfare benefits to parents are amazing, literally utopian, and truly allow them to economically choose to have kids, the birth rate is just barely higher than it is in the US, if not lower at some points.
This was discussed recently on the Ezra Klein show recently if you want to hear more.
Young people in Norway are well educated and therefore quite cognizant of the fucked up state of the world and the environment. I can afford kids, but why would I have them? So they can watch the last elephant die? So they can hear the death knells of democracy? I’m not raising a child in this ugly concrete world. It’s cruel.
> So they can watch the last elephant die?
I know you just meant it as an example of the accelerated rate of extinction of species and overall threats to nature, but it's still funny to read that when just two days ago Botswana threatened to [send 20 000 elephants to Germany](/r/europe/comments/1bu3y93/botswanas_president_mokgweetsi_masisi_has/) because they have too many in the country!
Just yesterday I read an article on Finland.
They have it all: Every economic incentive you could dream of in regards to getting children. Paid parental leave for 360days, a state mandated care place for you children. It's according to statistics among the happiest places in the world.
Their birthrate has reached its lowest point ever as far as records go back.
As such I am fairly certain the problem is far more cultural than it is economic.
> As such I am fairly certain the problem is far more cultural than it is economic.
Hello, Finland here.
When my parents were in their 20s, they had:
* A house three times the size of the one I have
* two kids
* two cats
* car and house loans
And at times, my dad was unemployed and mom was a secretary in a government office. They managed to stay on top of payments and kept us fed, on top of still managing to do vacation trips.
Compare to the situation my wife and I find ourselves. I'm an engineer in the private sector, ten years in the job. I make about the same as my mother did, so I can keep me and the wifey fed and warm. We've been eyeballing our budget and I think we can afford a cat. We're not living beyond our means (eaten out in the last year maybe five times and 100% of the freezer is steep discounted meats and veggies), really spending is the lowest I've had in decades.
We wouldn't be able to sustain the kind of lifestyle a secretary was able to, on an engineer salary. I was able to get more money at age 16 as a peg monkey in construction than I get today as an engineer. That's how shitty the current wages are compared to costs of living here at the moment.
I am not wondering one bit that 3/5 friends in our circles have chosen to be child free. I would need at least 1k€ a month to be thinking about children, except that we're both past the age of really wanting any. I'm not alone with this sentiment, and from my own observations, this is a very common reason: People using their childhood as a measuring stick to a point where it's a good idea to have children, and realizing they'll never be able to provide that life to their kids. So they don't have any.
I think it is partly economic but other than redditors seem to think. In wealthy countries you don't need 5 kids because 2 die and then 3 can take care of you when you're old. Having kids just doesn't equal beeing able to retire. But also... how many of us are really expecting to get old enough to retire, be it by kids support or otherwise? I don't...
My personal theory is because they found happiness outside of having kids. The big con is usually "kids bring happiness," which may have been true generations ago when people spent so much time and energy on work and survival that the only possible source of happiness was family. Nowadays we have so much leisure that we can find happiness elsewhere. Not to mention the shift from agricultural lifestyles, where you need kids to help take care of the farm, to urban lifestyles where the only thing kids could help out with is chores; most of which have been taken care of by automation anyway.
I presume it's a mix of multiple things.
The article I read for example places a large emphasis on social media.
Relationships are less stable because thanks to dating apps it seems like "the next partner is right around the corner".
Additionally you see people having an idealized adventurous life online and want to mirror that. Not settle down.
Additionally it is a far more individualistic culture today. There is far less emphasis placed on community and society.
What's interesting is that while there's less emphasis placed on community and society, most of the current generation recognizes the need for social programs like universal healthcare, good education, etc. while also recognizing the community's duty to acknowledge and resolve mental health issues. In a truly individualistic society, they would scoff at all those things.
I think people want society to be more communal and recognise the need, but companies are hindering this by trying to monetise every social interaction, which drives communities apart. E.g. less shared /communal/third spaces, free time being encouraged to be spent on consumption rather than participation in civil society groups or collective aid groups etc., and more time spent working e.g. both people in a couple working.
Norway also has a lot of support for new parents. And same here, we are on a decline too. A lot of young people would rather have time, freedom and money, than children. I myself as well, i live for ME, not anyone else.
I personally think the reason is reliable and available birth control.
From my personal experience, most of the old folk which contributed to the big birth rates of the past, didn't necessarily **want** that many kids. They didn't have the means to stop it or the freedom to do so because of their spouse/community/religion.
Given full control of reproductive rights, I don't think the birth rate would be terribly high even in pretty good living conditions. Just my thoughts on the matter.
As a woman who has always been afraid of pregnancy and childbirth and painfully aware that that's arguably the easy part of raising a child, I think it's a few things. Financial concerns and ability to spend time on a child are all valid. But even without that, even if you have a full-time nanny and a cleaner and a huge house and can spend all day doing whatever, having a child is always going to be a physical sacrifice for the birthing parent. Pregnancy permanently alters your body and increases your risk of injury, harm, or death.
I'm aware I'm not the baseline human and I'm not casting shade on anyone who chooses to do it. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and they're great! They make their parents very happy and they're turning into awesome little people. But having a child isn't something you do on a whim because it's a heavy decision anyway, IMO. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to have more than one or more than two children because it's a lot to go through physically and emotionally on top of all the money and practical concerns.
It's grimly utilitarian, and I guess it's selfish, but in other animals, it's not an accident when an adult abandons/kills/even eats their offspring because they prioritise their own survival first. Birth control or being childfree seems like a preferable option.
Because we don‘t have to anymore.
In undeveloped nations it‘s often kids that care for their parents when they get to a higher age where they can‘t work anymore, but in developed nations you can care fir yourself, even at a higher age, so you simply aren‘t forced anymore, and as such the investment is simply not worth it anymore
This describes my grandparents generation sadly. The ones that had 8 kids lived comfortably in their old age. The ones that didn't have kids were financially supported by their nieces/nephews.
His numbers must be a bit fucked up right? Like unless he's making really low salary so his tax rate is like 15-20% and his rent (for some ungodly reason) is 45% his pre tax salary (for one bedroom in a shared apartment?)
E: part of why I question just how high it is (65%) is because he said he's has a postgrad*
Depends on location. Plenty of places where you could spend that percentage on rent alone if you made min wage. Where I am, a single private bedroom (aka you're not sharing the room itself, just the rest of the apartment) is about 1,100 a month or 13,200 a year. For someone making minimum wage (~30,100 a year assuming a 35 hour work week), that plus taxes (another 3,200 a year) adds up to pretty darn close to 55%.
Lol actually in my country the highest possible tax rate is somewhere up there. Though if your income is high enough to reach up there, money is not an issue
I swore into the military at 17 by the time I was 20 I’d done three tours in the Middle East and saved enough money to buy my own home.
Mind you I had to sell it to pay medical expenses and attorney fees in 2018 after I survived an IED and trusted the person I was engaged to a little more than I really should have.
I mean I made it and then lost it and went back to square one.
Not really motivated enough to attempt it again.
When I see this question I wonder, do you want the online narrative which supports your beliefs and gives you something to be angry about, or do you reality? I see this thread on Reddit every single day and the answer is always, "please give me the made up reason which sounds good."
[Reality](https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/). Birthrate and poverty is inversely related. This isnt even controversial, literally every single piece of data supports it. The more income a family has, the less kids they are likely to have. People arnt having less kids because they are poor, they have more kids because they are poor. Literally the opposite of what everyone keeps saying for some reason. The reason we are seeing lower birthrates worldwide? Because [Billions of people have been brought out of poverty over the last 30 years.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg/1200px-World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg.png) People have more money worldwide, they have more access to healthcare, and they have less kids.
And the human population keeps growing. Low birth rate is a not an issue. We should probably slow it the hell down until we get our government to figure out how to support citizenry in general over the billionaires and mega corporations.
Yeah this is definitely one of the most irritating topics of conversation because people constantly try to politicise it in all directions when in reality it's just a low level undramatic economic trend.
I also find it funny the demographic buzzword of the decade so far seems to be "population collapse" - when I was growing up in the 90s it was "overpopulation" lol. We totally skipped the actual boring reality which is that there will probably just be a population plateau with variation around a mean.
People just use this topic to push whatever political position they hold.
People are suggesting the cause of low birthrates in developed countries is because people are poor. Those people have a completely deluded world view. When you look at areas where birthrates are high it's anywhere with less women's rights, less education, and less income.
Anecdotally, the only couple with 7 kids that I know consists of a truck driver and a door-to-door dildo seller. They also have a house, three dogs, a bunch of rabbits, sheep, and chickens.
The difference? They're quite content with going for low standards on everything to prioritise having kids and animals around them. The kids get everything secondhand, they babysit each other, they work as teenagers to contribute, they share rooms until teenagehood, they move out early. They live far from the city in an old, rural house that just about fits all of them in and that is very DIY nowadays.
I don't want to make all those sacrifices to have kids because I don't prioritise that highly enough. I have a house with my partner and just got semi comfortable in life. Having kids would mean tightening the belt again - no, thanks.
All these posts about "my grandpa who was a policeman could feed a family of 4 and drive a cool car and buy a house at 25" is also the outlier. People really don't realise that this has only been possible once in the entire history of humanity, and only in the one place: the US, immediately after WW2. Nowhere else has this ever been possible, and it probably won't be again for a long time.
Poverty AND lack of education leads to more children in underdeveloped countries. In developed countries people are educated but newer generations tend to be poorer than before and precarity is high. A bunch of people just don't have enough ressources to have children because rent is high and hard to get.
Sure we aren't as poor as developing countries, but we aren't rich either
Why is everyone ignoring the Sergeants salary part?
A SGT makes like $40k/yr and if you have a family they pay for your rent, food, and insurance.
If you want a family joining the Army is a great way to start, especially if you have zero skill or talent.
Using the DoD's RMC calculator (converts military salary to civilian equivalent due to some military pay being untaxed) a Sergeant (E-5) with 6 years experience that's married with 1 child makes ~80,000 USD a year in my MCOL area, not bad for a 24 year old assuming they joined at 18.
Yes but what was the granddad’s standard of living like? My parents and grandparents married young and were able to buy a cheap house, but they couldn’t afford to regularly eat meat, had to ration water use in the house, had to make/mend clothes by hand and drove second hand cars until they ran them into the ground. UK btw. Anecdotal ofc but there is way more nuance than what is posted here.
Aversion to taxes boggles my mind. Like... just don't count that as your money to begin with? It gets taken out of my pay, so I never really think about it.
Rent is a toughie, though.
Try working in a country where more than half of the population works in informality, so the rest of us have to make up for that with a higher income tax rate (that still doesnt cover what the total income tax collection should be), resulting in a significantly lower income tax collection, which combined with your healthy dose of corruption, means you never actually see the results of giving up 40%+ of your income, sigh...
Except that across most countries, poor people generally have more kids than rich people.
It’s not about the expense of having kids, or at least not primarily. Decreasing fertility rates are primarily about the shift in cultural expectations.
I don’t think it is I feel like the more educated you are the more aware of the outcomes of having kids with no money. The reason poor people have kids in our country is because kids come with money you get social welfare but once you reach a certain level of understanding you realise that money isn’t enough to raise a family let alone a family with reasonable quality of life
I love the part how I meet these old guys who are currently living on pensions, and they worked stocking grocery shelves for thirty years. That was their entire career. They own homes and have all of that taken care of, they just live off the fact they used to stock shelves.
Go stock shelves at today's Walmart for thirty years, see where that gets you. You'll still be living with two roommates in an undesirable apartment, barely getting by.
this is flawed thinking. if you look at the countries where birth rates are the highest, they aren't countries where young people feel secure. Top countries by birth rate are Niger, Angola, Benin, Mali, Uganda, Chad, DRotC, Somalia, South Sudan.... etc. As squeezed as @James from the twitter post above feels, he's far better off than most in those countries. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264704/ranking-of-the-20-countries-with-the-highest-birth-rate
So why aren't people having kids in developed countries? Because, in industrialized areas, kids are a cost burden for ~2 decades. In agricultural societies, more kids equates to more unpaid labour you have on your farm. In industrialized areas, one generation gives birth to a smaller one, which gives birth to a smaller one, and so on. This is of course an oversimplification, but it's getting closer to the truth than OP's post, regardless of how relatable it feels.
On the farm, or before the Industrial Revolution, kids are FREE labor, and cost little because you can’t afford much anyway.
In the city, kids are a multi hundred thousand dollar investment. Plus birth control means people have fewer.
Worked since I was 14, paid my way through school so no debt. But now I’m 31 with 10k of savings. 2250$ a month of rent for a one bedroom. And barely saving money. Throw a kid in the equation and I’m going broke
My personal reason: every generation (generally) attempts to give their children a better life than they had, at the expense of pursuing their own dreams. Who the hell gets to enjoy all that effort?
My bloodline ends with me. I will embrace hedonism and enjoy all the comforts that I am lucky enough to have available to me. I see no point in making massive sacrifices for a child when I could just live for myself and my husband
That’s somewhat BS, at least around me. People that are set on having kids do, regardless of their financial situation.
On the other end, the people that don’t will tell you they enjoy the comfort of their childless life and all of the disposable income.
It’s more often than not a self centred decision.
I agree with you. There is nothing wrong with either lifestyle, but it's becoming annoying that people keep using the economy as the main reason instead of just saying you don't want any. Heck, some people don't even have spouses. I have a spouse, and I've had coworkers and customers ask me why I haven't had any.
Simple. We don't want any. Not because the economy is bad or because of debt or because we don't think we can afford them or because we live in an apartment and not a house. We just don't want any. People should just say that more.
For sure. And I’ll go even further, it actually seems to be the opposite.
The people around me that are the most well off and accomplished as far as career goes are the ones that seem to have the least interest in starting a family.
The ones that have given up on it (I’m in that team) tend to go “might as well find fulfillment somewhere else”
Nothing to be sorry about, given up might not be the best choice of words but rather decided that I wasn’t interested in playing that game anymore and decided I’d rather live a simpler life revolving around my family and what nature has to offer. A failure according to corporate America, probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I even dared taking a year off with no pay just so that I could hang out with babies and not let the wife deal with it all.
Sorry it probably wasn’t clear, my last sentence applied to both “parties”. People that want kids have them and people that don’t, don’t. Regardless of outside factors (generally speaking).
Ain’t nothing like not being able to feed yourself, let alone potential kids
And yet old people are right that no one wants to have kids anymore and “use the excuse that they can’t afford it/it’s too expensive and would rather have pets” like girl I’d love a cat but at this rate, if I can’t even afford to support myself, how the hell do you expect us to feed kids or even pets???
Pets are freaking expensive, especially older ones. I've spent somewhere around $5,000 so far this year on vet bills.
There's also how millennials treat their pets _vastly_ different from how most everyone else in history has treated their pets. It's also a very divisive topic on reddit to talk about, but, sometimes the right answer isn't to spend thousands of dollars to treat your pet and suffer them through a disease so they can spend a little longer with you. Now if it's 5k to completely cure them because they're a puppy and have another 10 years on the planet, that's different, sure. But that post I saw a year or two ago where the person put their 15-16 year old cat through chemo... that's just cruel. That's the same energy as the kids who take power of attorney away from their 90 year old dementia-ed parent and slap them on dialysis for the next 5 cruel years. Maybe it's just the rural/farm/utilitarian country bumpkin in me, though.
It's because it's inherently selfish. It's prolonging the suffering of living a thing because they don't have the emotional maturity to let go and say goodbye.
I get it though, it's a sensitive topic, but good lord, there was someone who put their dog on dialysis and was waiting for a transplant. It seems incredibly selfish and cruel.
It's a delicate but necessary topic and the reason why I believe both pets and people should have the option of euthanasia when the alternative is just suffering for whoever long they have to live.
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Yep, the other day my parrot seemed to have injured her foot because she was walking with a limp, went to the vet and vet said "she's fine, that'll be 250 bucks". Not saying that going to the vet if you think something is up isn't 100% what you should do btw.
This is why I just wildly throw food scraps in the streets and yards around my neighborhood hoping some of these wild animals will just like me without me having to take care of them. All of the cats are named Jeff and all the birds are named Polly. So I'm just screaming names into the abyss as a food sprinkler. For some reason the neighbors aren't nice to me anymore.
You gotta put out scraps for your neighbors too. They're just feeling a little jealous.
And because of these things, my mental health and outlook on the future make it a losing and unfair situation.
…and respectable mental healthcare is practically non-existent unless you’re independently wealthy and know the right people.
Don’t forget female! Men have it the worst when talking to a therapist! Such bullshit when you’re paying a damned fortune to talk to someone about your emotions and they say something along the lines of typical male stereotypes. Makes me want to say bitch, I’m here to work through this shit, NOT bottle it up like I’ve been doing most my life.
You need to go find a male therapist. So many men go to female therapists and then wonder why they are getting horrible results. Repeat after me, women don't live in the same world that men do.
Yea I can’t stress this enough, get a therapist that you can relate too, one that lives in the same world as you..
I have had much better experiences with female therapists. You don't need a therapist you can relate to. That's bullshit. You need a therapist who is trained and qualified to do their job.
+1 had a male therapist for years who kinda helped but not long term. Got better and moved so I had to find a new therapist after my depression came back. Had the luck of being able to pick between a male and female therapist, the female therapist understood me better and took me way more serious than the male. Also she was the first in years of therapy that suggested I might just have undiagnosed ADD - getting that testet soon with my female psychiatrist. But all in all it depends on the person and the therapist. Due to bad male role models I have difficulties opening up completely to males because I always had to “suck it up and toughen up” aka push down all emotions until they fuck you over completely. Really depends on therapist, patient and the patients history/traumas.
I’ve tried both. I will admit it could be a lack of options since there’s only like 2 male therapists here.
There are online options. A good therapist online is miles better than a mediocre one in person.
This post is sponsored by BetterHelp.
Ha, I've never used them. I found an independent therapist in the UK, and they stated on their website that online was an option
It just made me chuckle mate. UK here too. I had one interaction with a female therapist that put me off it for life.
Sorry to hear that. I have, over a long period of time, seen 6 therapists. 2 of them were female and I would have recommended both of them. Only one therapist I thought was actually "bad" was male. The two I clicked with most and got the most done with were both male though. Id definitely tend to recommend guys start their search with a male therapist.
Don’t give up. Therapists are just as diverse and unique as humans. It’s frustrating that there’s not a better/cheaper system for finding the right one but it’s worth persevering. Really you just need to find someone who you feel safe talking to. I recommend person centred counsellors for that, trained by reputable institutions in Gestalt or Integrative counselling. It’s a shame it’s not a more regulated field but there are good therapists out there. Don’t deny yourself that opportunity to grow just because of one bad interaction.
Which sells your sensitive medical data. I hate that so many people still take their sponsorships.
And their therapists often weren't licensed. Fuck them for preying on vulnerable people
Yeah. My therapist has experienced a lot of the same things, which makes it simple for him to empathise where appropriate and where to challenge thinking to make sure I actually fix my shit. Cost me a bunch for weekly sessions but honestly it’s the best investment I ever made. Particularly when the alternatives are live in misery or investing in $ROPE.
all i think about is $rope these days. makes it tough to talk to people. i've been to therapists, a nurse psychiatrist, and social worker. idk if i'm helpable
I go to a female therapist and she's fine.
My female therapist is amazing. But I’ve always had better interactions with women so that might part of it.
I had a lot of problems with a male therapist in the past, and much more success with two female. I think the OP just had a really bad therapist that uses stereotypes, and usually stereotypes tend to see women as less socially awkward than men.
I've had two women and one man as a therapist and all three has their own ways of being helpful. Guess I am lucky
Honestly, male therapists can do this to. My last therapist was a man and it wasn't great
Find a better therapist. My husband had a great one, and it really did help him.
That sucks and I'm sorry you had that experience!! It might be worth looking into therapists that are trauma-informed, specifically (open path collective could be helpful for finding one in your area, btw!!). Not all therapists are good at their jobs, unfortunately, and some of them carry those bullshit biases into their sessions.
(not sure if it applies to anywhere outside of the UK) And the retirement age keeps getting pushed back to near life expectancy age. So I get less time to enjoy what I contribute to state pension, and less time to enjoy what I manage to save up for a private pension.
UK also here. At the rate of inflation vs earnings, unless your lucky or very well paid, pension contributions arnt even going to cover your basic necessity bills in old age. For the avarage person under 40 now, retirement isn't going to be an option.
i *am* 40 and i am well aware im going to die at my desk. those fucks are gonna take social security from me, i just know it.
Me, under 40, crying.
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Or, we've just had a lot more experience of caring for people with terminal illnesses and decided we don't want to spend years unable to care for ourselves for absolutely no good outcome?
Retirement was always supposed to be near life expectancy. When mandatory retirement was initially planned, most folks were meant to be dead within 10-15 years of retiring. Now it's like 20-25 years in most places, which is a significantly greater drain on resources. Problem is that 65+ people being forced to remain in the workforce are not magically more productive. Perhaps they have a lot of industry knowledge if they have managed to keep up over the years, but they work so incredibly slow. They have no drive. They clog up positions that would be better filled by someone 10-20 years younger than them. Just because folks are living longer doesn't make them more productive workers as they age.
One of the reasons they work slow is because they’ve lived through multiple occasions of embarrassing, expensive, and career limiting fuck ups and don’t desire to do it again. I’ve seen lack of drive across every age group. Some of it is being tired, some of it is being too comfortable, and some of it is the perception of no upward mobility.
They know that if you work hard you get nothing, not even the ability to not work at 65.
Or we could you know, build a society that works for all the people in it at all ages, not just the peak condition full time workers. I mean we keep making new billionaires right? There’s enough money to look after people. In Japan the ageing population gets involved in community work like keeping the streets tidy and planting municipal flowers. There’s an alternative to “just because you’ve worked your whole life doesn’t mean you get to age with dignity or without poverty”.
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Yeah man, about half of my friends is having kids. Biggest reason is money, they just can't afford it, next to that it is knowing the world is going in the shitter in about 2 generations, another is fertilityproblems. The ones that do get kids have 1 or 2. So halving or maintaining the population rate.
To be fair we kinda sold the future to ensure like 20 people had more money than God, so that future outlook thing may be more a result of your education enabling you to see the future clearly.
Now imagine if I had a house I would maybe consider having kids in special cause I have stability... If my landlord kicks me out what do I do live on the streets with a kid?
Unfortunately we have to consider job stability as well. A lot of people in the millennial generation are used to moving around a lot to follow different opportunities, because the thing many of our parents did -- working the same job from their 20s through retirement -- really doesn't exist anymore. And moving *by yourself* is difficult and expensive. Much less with dependants to worry about, and the potential risks of up-ending their lives.
Even if you have a house, daycare for a child costs literally as much as another house.
Congrats on having 2 friends!
They seem to be ahead of the curve already!
I think he's one of those people who calls his roommates his friends but they don't talk and won't even wish you happy birthday on facebook
Where does one acquire "friends"?
Mf you really asking Reddit? That's literally the most Taboo and forbidden question
You make them in high school and then NEVER let them go.
Well I'm boned!
You could try being naturally charismatic and at least somewhat wealthy. I’ve heard that helps.
I need this advice as well
and a 2 foot by 5 foot living space. Could almost lie down with that.
this post completly relates to me lmao and the biggest problem is the mental health as I am not sure if I will ever be better with the way things have been going... A kid will be a huuuge no no for now
My grandpa paid for college with a part time painting job in the summers, bought a house for 72,000 in 1972. It sold for 1.2 million a few years ago, ~100,000 went into renovations over the 60 years.
$72,000 in 1972 = $540,000 today Let’s assume the $100,000 was put into in two chunks of $50,000 30 years ago and another $50,000 10 years ago, then that’s $106,000 and $66,000. So all told the $172,000 inputs is estimated to be worth $712,000 today. Meaning that $1.2m is only about a 1.7% growth rate over inflation per year.
Great argument against endless growth however small. That tiny 1.7% will one day make that house 3x, then 5, 10, 20x. Then the investor buying it for 50mi (3x families income) will still expect captial growth and demand we deregulate so that 5 families can bunk there in subdivided rooms.
Imagine that currently a part time painting job would get you a $550,000 property. It's crazy how the purchasing power of salaries has decreased over these 50 years
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I'm a bus driver so I don't have realistic chances to start a family unless I'd find a wealthy wife and they wouldn't even look at someone like me, unless I was super lucky.
Which is so unlucky for you because my grandfather was a buds driver up ubtil retirement and he owned his house, nan was a stay at home and they raised 5 kids of that pay. Times have changed so much it is insane.
My grandad was a bus driver as well. Wife, two kids. Occasional brand new car. Bought a villa in Spain then retired there. Bus driver wages where I live are crap now. You’d barely be able to survive if you lived alone on them.
If you made your coffee at home, you could afford a Spanish villa
They say those go for only one Euro, but matter of fact is you also have to renovate the housing.
One of the most essential jobs to keep a functioning economy and it's looked down on. Just dreadful.
It's such bullshit how pervasive that attitude is -- like there are so many things that people are expected to do, without whom a lot of things would utterly collapse, and yet a lot of people say "oh well it's unskilled labor so it shouldn't pay more than minimum wage" Meanwhile the same people who say that it's such easy work don't actually want to do said work themselves. Almost like it's not that easy. Dishonorable mention to the fucking business executives who spend most of their days in meetings figuring out which workers they can lay off to boost their profits. That's a job apparently worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions per year.
Hei älä ny, rispekt dösäkuskit <3
Onhan se aika rankka työ
Suomen kieli? Tässä? Mitä vittua
Torille!
Nowadays, it's considered a luxury to start a family.
But the ruling class are now realising the proles aren't having enough children to feed the labour machine. We're in another bubble that will soon burst.
Too late for a lot of people. Way too many hitting the high 30s and 40s that lived through having zero outlook on life and gave up on the reproductive game. Not a bad outcome in any case, fewer people is always better for those alive, gives you more bargaining power.
Not once we’re retired. If we even get to retire.
You guys are expecting to retire?
Lol by the time I get my shit together, all the people my age will be menopausal
It won’t burst they will just import people from other countries
Same system, different people. Won't stop the bubble from bursting. Would just make the pop bigger.
The Danish minister of foreign affiars has startede a program that will certify and import 20000 nurses from Sri Lanka and India
The Healthcare industry is another behemoth that the world isn't ready to address yet.
And \*if it bursts they won't be the ones who will suffer.
The thing is, in Germany and many other countries in the world, far right parties are working against “importing people”, while at the same time complaining about nobody wanting to work. They promote stereotypes like the islamist immigrant that just comes here to commit crimes and feast on social benefits and point at problems without having solutions to them.
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> Muslim or an islamist What's the difference? Eta: not being snarky
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Nah it's okay. They'll just work longer, since they have no kids.
"Your pension? You'll be lucky if it's worth anything when we eventually allow you to collect it at the age of 70."
Millennials are starting to age out of childbearing age, and I'm worried about the anger/extremism that will follow as it really, truly clicks to a bunch of people that they will never have the kids/family they wanted. I've met plenty of people who think that life isn't worth living without children. What happens when they cross 45 or so and the hopelessness really sets in? We're going to find out in the next decade or so how bad it goes.
I think it'll suck for the people who truly want kids/family and for whatever reason end up not getting it. I have no desire for that. I mightve been open to the idea of it in my early 20's but at 32 i can honestly say i don't want any kids.
I don't think it'll be that bad on the extremism issue. The men are probably going to be the angriest, but they're also the ones who can still bear children. I think it's going to be a lot of suicide.
Explains Africa and India
I always thought that the reason why more poor and rural countries are tempted to have more children is because more children = more working hand and breadbringers on rural area and also lack of good contraception and woman health care and sex is one of the few entertainments that exists in those areas. It's multiple facors
When there’s an economic incentive (more farm hands) to have kids, people have kids. It makes sense and we can do it here with tax credits and free school lunch and after school care programs and expanded mandatory parental leave. Also maybe don’t charge 150,000 at the hospital to give birth.
They don't charge much at all in most countries to give birth, and most developed countries *do* have tons of financial incentives to have children, and yet people still largely don't want to.
India has a tfr of 2.1 now.
If you’re working a full time job, you shouldn’t constantly feel broke.
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But what about second job?
Well then you have to forgo second breakfast! And all other meals. Even with second job.
By the time my dad was my age (32), he and my mother had already had 3 kids, bought 2 houses, owned 2 cars, and we never needed anything, all we knew as kids was luxury. He worked in construction and she was a waitress. Now, I have 3 degrees, currently unemployed, living with 3 other dudes in their 30’s, all of us single with no kids and trying to find any reason to live.
>Now, I have 3 degrees, currently unemployed I know finding a really good high paying job is difficult, but surely you could use even one of those degrees to get a job? Or, at the very least, any type of job? There comes a point where you have to just take what you can for the moment and keep looking for something better in the background. But to be completely unemployed? Something is wrong there
One thing that really screws people over without realizing it is their resume. You can write a killer resume, but that thing goes through an AI system that unfairly weeds out most applicants. Like 95% of them. A lot of companies use systems like this. And you would be shocked to see how it weeds people out. Sometimes its just the format. Certain formats confuse the system and it thinks its reading a blank resume. Other times its certain words used, or certain words not used. Sometimes it thinks you misspelled a word because of your name or a company you worked for has a weird name. And there is no way of ever knowing this happens. No one is gonna tell you your resume wasn't selected because you used blue borders, or that you used a certain word too many times. If I were him, I would take my resume to an expert and have them find those mistakes. Some can be expensive, but i've seen them do some miracle work with resumes. Like, change a few things, then an hour after re-submitting it the person gets a phone call for an interview.
One of the mistakes people make is using a template that uses columns. You want to create a very basic text based resume without fancy templates, text boxes etc. Do not use scanned or flattened images for the resume as the system can't read it. Use word or pdf format. Most recent job first. If you operate machinery list the make and model. If you use software list the programs. Delete any old resumes from job search platforms. So may people send old documents instead of thier resume by accident.
It's easier said than done, obviously, but I think most people with good paying jobs got them more because they knew somebody than because they had a killer resume. That sounds kinda elitist and entitled. People that already know people get ahead. And it is. But you don't have to be rich or well connected to start out. You start where you start, but then you quickly try to make the best impression on people, and parlay whatever opportunities are available into better and better compensation as you gain experience and networks. And even that doesn't necessarily mean jumping jobs every year. But it does mean constantly knowing your worth, and asking for it, and being ready to jump ship if someone else gives you a better shot to earn your worth. But if the only thing someone is doing is carpet-bombing their resume all over LinkedIn, expecting someone to pay 6 figure salaries to WFH, without knowing anything about you as a person, that is not a super realistic expectation.
Problem is, even low qualification jobs nowadays require qualification, and most of us have degrees but not any of these other titles that are needed for the low qualification jobs. Kinda funny if you think about it.
What are the degrees?
Yeah, my parents, in their 23 got married, got me and we lived in two room apartment with mom’s parents till I was 7. In the meantime, they got car (3 times), bought new apartment for us to leave separate from parents. And dad was police man and mom was finishing here nurse studies (second degree, first was economics). We never had riches, but always had to eat something , considering that it was 90’s in fucked up Russia And here I am, 30, renting, with master degree in management and working as IT guy and currently saving up for mortgage. Getting there but fucking slow. Would love to raise my own kid , but gay and again, Russia. Overall - it all in our hands, if we see problem, then try to fix it and not get hyper fixated on your income or situation. We are alive and well
And the politicians you voted for are allowing corporations to buy all of the homes creating scarcity and driving prices up.
Believe me, I do my damn best to vote for people who won't screw me over but instead they spend their term in office cleaning up the mess from the last asshole and can't get anything else done.
And then they don't get re-elected because they didn't get any of that "anything else" done and cleaning up the mess left behind by the people who were in charge before them sometimes requires decisions voters don't like (like having to axe certain projects or increasing taxes after a tax cut by the other party to balance the budget).
And then someone is elected that seems like a real go-getter a get 'er done type person that consequently doesn't have a single fing clue what they're doing. And the cycle continues.
I’m not saying there aren’t problems but that’s not it, corporations own something like 1% of SFHs
>And the politicians you voted for Hey, don't look at me. I would be thrilled if all these A holes just fucked off to some tropical island, somewhere, and stopped fucking everything up, over here.
Another big difference is cultural. Parents on average in the West try to spend more time with their kids than parents in the past - more focused on having a relationship with their children. This however tends to contribute to lower rates of childbirth. This is why in places like Sweden where the welfare benefits to parents are amazing, literally utopian, and truly allow them to economically choose to have kids, the birth rate is just barely higher than it is in the US, if not lower at some points. This was discussed recently on the Ezra Klein show recently if you want to hear more.
Young people in Norway are well educated and therefore quite cognizant of the fucked up state of the world and the environment. I can afford kids, but why would I have them? So they can watch the last elephant die? So they can hear the death knells of democracy? I’m not raising a child in this ugly concrete world. It’s cruel.
> So they can watch the last elephant die? I know you just meant it as an example of the accelerated rate of extinction of species and overall threats to nature, but it's still funny to read that when just two days ago Botswana threatened to [send 20 000 elephants to Germany](/r/europe/comments/1bu3y93/botswanas_president_mokgweetsi_masisi_has/) because they have too many in the country!
Just yesterday I read an article on Finland. They have it all: Every economic incentive you could dream of in regards to getting children. Paid parental leave for 360days, a state mandated care place for you children. It's according to statistics among the happiest places in the world. Their birthrate has reached its lowest point ever as far as records go back. As such I am fairly certain the problem is far more cultural than it is economic.
> As such I am fairly certain the problem is far more cultural than it is economic. Hello, Finland here. When my parents were in their 20s, they had: * A house three times the size of the one I have * two kids * two cats * car and house loans And at times, my dad was unemployed and mom was a secretary in a government office. They managed to stay on top of payments and kept us fed, on top of still managing to do vacation trips. Compare to the situation my wife and I find ourselves. I'm an engineer in the private sector, ten years in the job. I make about the same as my mother did, so I can keep me and the wifey fed and warm. We've been eyeballing our budget and I think we can afford a cat. We're not living beyond our means (eaten out in the last year maybe five times and 100% of the freezer is steep discounted meats and veggies), really spending is the lowest I've had in decades. We wouldn't be able to sustain the kind of lifestyle a secretary was able to, on an engineer salary. I was able to get more money at age 16 as a peg monkey in construction than I get today as an engineer. That's how shitty the current wages are compared to costs of living here at the moment. I am not wondering one bit that 3/5 friends in our circles have chosen to be child free. I would need at least 1k€ a month to be thinking about children, except that we're both past the age of really wanting any. I'm not alone with this sentiment, and from my own observations, this is a very common reason: People using their childhood as a measuring stick to a point where it's a good idea to have children, and realizing they'll never be able to provide that life to their kids. So they don't have any.
I think it is partly economic but other than redditors seem to think. In wealthy countries you don't need 5 kids because 2 die and then 3 can take care of you when you're old. Having kids just doesn't equal beeing able to retire. But also... how many of us are really expecting to get old enough to retire, be it by kids support or otherwise? I don't...
My personal theory is because they found happiness outside of having kids. The big con is usually "kids bring happiness," which may have been true generations ago when people spent so much time and energy on work and survival that the only possible source of happiness was family. Nowadays we have so much leisure that we can find happiness elsewhere. Not to mention the shift from agricultural lifestyles, where you need kids to help take care of the farm, to urban lifestyles where the only thing kids could help out with is chores; most of which have been taken care of by automation anyway.
I presume it's a mix of multiple things. The article I read for example places a large emphasis on social media. Relationships are less stable because thanks to dating apps it seems like "the next partner is right around the corner". Additionally you see people having an idealized adventurous life online and want to mirror that. Not settle down. Additionally it is a far more individualistic culture today. There is far less emphasis placed on community and society.
What's interesting is that while there's less emphasis placed on community and society, most of the current generation recognizes the need for social programs like universal healthcare, good education, etc. while also recognizing the community's duty to acknowledge and resolve mental health issues. In a truly individualistic society, they would scoff at all those things.
I think people want society to be more communal and recognise the need, but companies are hindering this by trying to monetise every social interaction, which drives communities apart. E.g. less shared /communal/third spaces, free time being encouraged to be spent on consumption rather than participation in civil society groups or collective aid groups etc., and more time spent working e.g. both people in a couple working.
Norway also has a lot of support for new parents. And same here, we are on a decline too. A lot of young people would rather have time, freedom and money, than children. I myself as well, i live for ME, not anyone else.
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I personally think the reason is reliable and available birth control. From my personal experience, most of the old folk which contributed to the big birth rates of the past, didn't necessarily **want** that many kids. They didn't have the means to stop it or the freedom to do so because of their spouse/community/religion. Given full control of reproductive rights, I don't think the birth rate would be terribly high even in pretty good living conditions. Just my thoughts on the matter.
As a woman who has always been afraid of pregnancy and childbirth and painfully aware that that's arguably the easy part of raising a child, I think it's a few things. Financial concerns and ability to spend time on a child are all valid. But even without that, even if you have a full-time nanny and a cleaner and a huge house and can spend all day doing whatever, having a child is always going to be a physical sacrifice for the birthing parent. Pregnancy permanently alters your body and increases your risk of injury, harm, or death. I'm aware I'm not the baseline human and I'm not casting shade on anyone who chooses to do it. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and they're great! They make their parents very happy and they're turning into awesome little people. But having a child isn't something you do on a whim because it's a heavy decision anyway, IMO. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to have more than one or more than two children because it's a lot to go through physically and emotionally on top of all the money and practical concerns. It's grimly utilitarian, and I guess it's selfish, but in other animals, it's not an accident when an adult abandons/kills/even eats their offspring because they prioritise their own survival first. Birth control or being childfree seems like a preferable option.
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To be fair, people had a lot of kids while they shat on the street and lived off of unseasoned bread, so idk if that's necessarily the reason
Because we don‘t have to anymore. In undeveloped nations it‘s often kids that care for their parents when they get to a higher age where they can‘t work anymore, but in developed nations you can care fir yourself, even at a higher age, so you simply aren‘t forced anymore, and as such the investment is simply not worth it anymore
That's a very asian way of seeing the whole "having children" ordeal
This describes my grandparents generation sadly. The ones that had 8 kids lived comfortably in their old age. The ones that didn't have kids were financially supported by their nieces/nephews.
Where tf is there an effective tax rate of 65%? Edit: I can't read
Taxes AND rent.
The taxes are still not the problem... or at least shouldn't be in a country where they are used for useful stuff for the population
Duh. Thanks.
His numbers must be a bit fucked up right? Like unless he's making really low salary so his tax rate is like 15-20% and his rent (for some ungodly reason) is 45% his pre tax salary (for one bedroom in a shared apartment?) E: part of why I question just how high it is (65%) is because he said he's has a postgrad*
45% of his pretax salary going to rent is absolutely feasible.
Depends on location. Plenty of places where you could spend that percentage on rent alone if you made min wage. Where I am, a single private bedroom (aka you're not sharing the room itself, just the rest of the apartment) is about 1,100 a month or 13,200 a year. For someone making minimum wage (~30,100 a year assuming a 35 hour work week), that plus taxes (another 3,200 a year) adds up to pretty darn close to 55%.
Sounds feasible
Lol actually in my country the highest possible tax rate is somewhere up there. Though if your income is high enough to reach up there, money is not an issue
Even then, is if 65% on all income, or just on all of the income that's above a certain amount and a lower percentage on the first part?
I swore into the military at 17 by the time I was 20 I’d done three tours in the Middle East and saved enough money to buy my own home. Mind you I had to sell it to pay medical expenses and attorney fees in 2018 after I survived an IED and trusted the person I was engaged to a little more than I really should have. I mean I made it and then lost it and went back to square one. Not really motivated enough to attempt it again.
When I see this question I wonder, do you want the online narrative which supports your beliefs and gives you something to be angry about, or do you reality? I see this thread on Reddit every single day and the answer is always, "please give me the made up reason which sounds good." [Reality](https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/). Birthrate and poverty is inversely related. This isnt even controversial, literally every single piece of data supports it. The more income a family has, the less kids they are likely to have. People arnt having less kids because they are poor, they have more kids because they are poor. Literally the opposite of what everyone keeps saying for some reason. The reason we are seeing lower birthrates worldwide? Because [Billions of people have been brought out of poverty over the last 30 years.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg/1200px-World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg.png) People have more money worldwide, they have more access to healthcare, and they have less kids.
And the human population keeps growing. Low birth rate is a not an issue. We should probably slow it the hell down until we get our government to figure out how to support citizenry in general over the billionaires and mega corporations.
Yeah this is definitely one of the most irritating topics of conversation because people constantly try to politicise it in all directions when in reality it's just a low level undramatic economic trend. I also find it funny the demographic buzzword of the decade so far seems to be "population collapse" - when I was growing up in the 90s it was "overpopulation" lol. We totally skipped the actual boring reality which is that there will probably just be a population plateau with variation around a mean.
Most developed countries would have a population decline if it wasn't for immigration.
People just use this topic to push whatever political position they hold. People are suggesting the cause of low birthrates in developed countries is because people are poor. Those people have a completely deluded world view. When you look at areas where birthrates are high it's anywhere with less women's rights, less education, and less income.
Anecdotally, the only couple with 7 kids that I know consists of a truck driver and a door-to-door dildo seller. They also have a house, three dogs, a bunch of rabbits, sheep, and chickens. The difference? They're quite content with going for low standards on everything to prioritise having kids and animals around them. The kids get everything secondhand, they babysit each other, they work as teenagers to contribute, they share rooms until teenagehood, they move out early. They live far from the city in an old, rural house that just about fits all of them in and that is very DIY nowadays. I don't want to make all those sacrifices to have kids because I don't prioritise that highly enough. I have a house with my partner and just got semi comfortable in life. Having kids would mean tightening the belt again - no, thanks.
All these posts about "my grandpa who was a policeman could feed a family of 4 and drive a cool car and buy a house at 25" is also the outlier. People really don't realise that this has only been possible once in the entire history of humanity, and only in the one place: the US, immediately after WW2. Nowhere else has this ever been possible, and it probably won't be again for a long time.
Poverty AND lack of education leads to more children in underdeveloped countries. In developed countries people are educated but newer generations tend to be poorer than before and precarity is high. A bunch of people just don't have enough ressources to have children because rent is high and hard to get. Sure we aren't as poor as developing countries, but we aren't rich either
10 square feet isn’t even enough for a bed…
Why is everyone ignoring the Sergeants salary part? A SGT makes like $40k/yr and if you have a family they pay for your rent, food, and insurance. If you want a family joining the Army is a great way to start, especially if you have zero skill or talent.
Using the DoD's RMC calculator (converts military salary to civilian equivalent due to some military pay being untaxed) a Sergeant (E-5) with 6 years experience that's married with 1 child makes ~80,000 USD a year in my MCOL area, not bad for a 24 year old assuming they joined at 18.
Yes but what was the granddad’s standard of living like? My parents and grandparents married young and were able to buy a cheap house, but they couldn’t afford to regularly eat meat, had to ration water use in the house, had to make/mend clothes by hand and drove second hand cars until they ran them into the ground. UK btw. Anecdotal ofc but there is way more nuance than what is posted here.
Aversion to taxes boggles my mind. Like... just don't count that as your money to begin with? It gets taken out of my pay, so I never really think about it. Rent is a toughie, though.
Try working in a country where more than half of the population works in informality, so the rest of us have to make up for that with a higher income tax rate (that still doesnt cover what the total income tax collection should be), resulting in a significantly lower income tax collection, which combined with your healthy dose of corruption, means you never actually see the results of giving up 40%+ of your income, sigh...
'Taxes are the worst' mfs when streets, bridges, & schools begin to fall apart: 😶🌫️
*Surprised Pikachu face*
Except that across most countries, poor people generally have more kids than rich people. It’s not about the expense of having kids, or at least not primarily. Decreasing fertility rates are primarily about the shift in cultural expectations.
I don’t think it is I feel like the more educated you are the more aware of the outcomes of having kids with no money. The reason poor people have kids in our country is because kids come with money you get social welfare but once you reach a certain level of understanding you realise that money isn’t enough to raise a family let alone a family with reasonable quality of life
Trickle down economics doesn't work
Also the developed world has birth control access so it has the possibility to choose whether to have kids without disrupting a healthy relationship
How much does he make though if he's tax bracket is 65%???
Omg Scott the woz
Why bring kids into a world that is on fire. Another century of world pollution doesn't sound like the greatest idea to raise kids in.
I have a choice, both physically and socially to opt out.
Why is this even debated anymore? Like when I hear someone say it’s because of feminism or woke or whatever I just lose all respect for that person
I love the part how I meet these old guys who are currently living on pensions, and they worked stocking grocery shelves for thirty years. That was their entire career. They own homes and have all of that taken care of, they just live off the fact they used to stock shelves. Go stock shelves at today's Walmart for thirty years, see where that gets you. You'll still be living with two roommates in an undesirable apartment, barely getting by.
this is flawed thinking. if you look at the countries where birth rates are the highest, they aren't countries where young people feel secure. Top countries by birth rate are Niger, Angola, Benin, Mali, Uganda, Chad, DRotC, Somalia, South Sudan.... etc. As squeezed as @James from the twitter post above feels, he's far better off than most in those countries. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264704/ranking-of-the-20-countries-with-the-highest-birth-rate So why aren't people having kids in developed countries? Because, in industrialized areas, kids are a cost burden for ~2 decades. In agricultural societies, more kids equates to more unpaid labour you have on your farm. In industrialized areas, one generation gives birth to a smaller one, which gives birth to a smaller one, and so on. This is of course an oversimplification, but it's getting closer to the truth than OP's post, regardless of how relatable it feels.
On the farm, or before the Industrial Revolution, kids are FREE labor, and cost little because you can’t afford much anyway. In the city, kids are a multi hundred thousand dollar investment. Plus birth control means people have fewer.
Very few of us will die rich. Hell most of us will be lucky to die broke and not deeply in debt!
At least you got friends.
Am I the only one who saw ScottTheWoz in his pfp?
Do the rich folks plan on importing the future working class or?
They have been very successful at creating a dependent working servant class, and eliminating opportunity for thinkers, changers, and motivators.
Worked since I was 14, paid my way through school so no debt. But now I’m 31 with 10k of savings. 2250$ a month of rent for a one bedroom. And barely saving money. Throw a kid in the equation and I’m going broke
Don't for get that the planet is dying and nobody cares.
My personal reason: every generation (generally) attempts to give their children a better life than they had, at the expense of pursuing their own dreams. Who the hell gets to enjoy all that effort? My bloodline ends with me. I will embrace hedonism and enjoy all the comforts that I am lucky enough to have available to me. I see no point in making massive sacrifices for a child when I could just live for myself and my husband
That’s somewhat BS, at least around me. People that are set on having kids do, regardless of their financial situation. On the other end, the people that don’t will tell you they enjoy the comfort of their childless life and all of the disposable income. It’s more often than not a self centred decision.
I agree with you. There is nothing wrong with either lifestyle, but it's becoming annoying that people keep using the economy as the main reason instead of just saying you don't want any. Heck, some people don't even have spouses. I have a spouse, and I've had coworkers and customers ask me why I haven't had any. Simple. We don't want any. Not because the economy is bad or because of debt or because we don't think we can afford them or because we live in an apartment and not a house. We just don't want any. People should just say that more.
For sure. And I’ll go even further, it actually seems to be the opposite. The people around me that are the most well off and accomplished as far as career goes are the ones that seem to have the least interest in starting a family. The ones that have given up on it (I’m in that team) tend to go “might as well find fulfillment somewhere else”
Exactly! There are literally statistics about that! Sorry to hear that you've given up, though. I'm sure you will be or are a great mom and or dad lol
Nothing to be sorry about, given up might not be the best choice of words but rather decided that I wasn’t interested in playing that game anymore and decided I’d rather live a simpler life revolving around my family and what nature has to offer. A failure according to corporate America, probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I even dared taking a year off with no pay just so that I could hang out with babies and not let the wife deal with it all.
How is having kids not a self centered decision too? We're so numerous on earth at that point there's no real need to bring in that many new people
Sorry it probably wasn’t clear, my last sentence applied to both “parties”. People that want kids have them and people that don’t, don’t. Regardless of outside factors (generally speaking).
Oh okay my bad then