Submitted 2 days ago by SleafordMod@feddit.uk to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
This article notes that “right-wing governments, including the US and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood”, as if today’s young adults just don’t want children.
But the author suggests that actually people do want children, and one of the main reasons they’re having fewer children is because they can’t afford many children.
Thoughts?
Falling birthrates are not a problem for humanity.
They’re a problem for capitalism which can’t rely on that for nebulous “growth” figures.
But if capitalists really want a solution, then a home for two adults and two children should be affordable on one average wage, not two. Build more and make them cheaper. If you can’t do that then you don’t care about the problem enough.
A plateauing population is a good thing! Growth is not a good thing! I don’t get how people don’t understand this. If something is going up forever it will eventually collapse spectacularly, if it’s stable instead it’ll stay stable.
It might not be a problem in itself, but it’s certainly a symptom.
Raising children requires hope for he future.
Of course the first post ww2 generation to see lower prospects then their parents. Will hesitate to bring children into that future.
This is one of my main reasons for not wanting kids…why would I want to bring a child into a world where I couldn’t guarantee them a decent standard of upbringing and think that the world is only going to get worse over the next 20 years anyway?
The people who do all the handwringing about falling birth rates are the same people who bring them about by their shitty policies.
We are only one and done because of financial constraints. I’d say that the package of benefits the government offers parents in my location is fantastic and good on them for doing so well to pull it out of the bag. However, what they don’t help with is early years childcare costs (0-3 years) which costs us around the same as our mortgage each month. Only now are we able to get 30 hours paid care. That would be ok if the cost of living and mortgage rates weren’t already exorbitant and we cannot even consider taking another 3 year hit with our current young dependant.
So yeah, we’d love another kid, but we aren’t able to afford one!
I’d love kids, but the world is fucked and it wouldn’t be fair on them.
This makes no sense
Millions of people are prevented from having the number of children they want by a toxic mix of economic barriers and sexism, a new UN report has warned.
How does that gel with the poorest countries in the world with societies that treat women like shit having the highest birth date?
There’s a difference between Women harming their careers by having children, and not being able to a career other than SAHM because you aren’t able to get a career job in the first place. Both are sexist, and while it would work to increase the birth rate to remove women’s rights, it is morally reprehensible, and yes looks sternly at the US, we see what you are doing!
I think uncertainty of employment is a huge issue. Enact a right to employment law.
Better yet, offer no strings attached income. For everyone. We have a lot of jobs that don’t really need to exist and it’s entirely senseless to force people to do bullshit work. We gotta escape this nonsense cultural dead end that says work is some noble purpose.
Now that is an objectively true position that will never get traction in our hellworld.
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 2 days ago
TL;DR: money. It’s always just money.
Redacted@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Also, civilsation is going to be brought to its knees by climate change in the coming decades.
Feels somewhat immoral to put someone you love through that.
Photuris@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Automation is going to chew up jobs faster than new ones are created, too.
Reduce the value of white collar labor, and white collar workers will flood to the blue collar trades, drastically reducing pay there as well.
Not a suitable environment for growing large families.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 days ago
I think “money” falls short as an explanation (though it’s certainly part of it). Countries like Sweden have substantially better state support for parents that the standard and the Swedish population isn’t exactly poor in general, either, yet they aren’t really getting that many more children than poorer countries with less support for parents.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Maybe so much money you can get other people to raise your kids for you, that kinda money 😎