Work real hard, 9 to 5, can't afford a roof over your head
The social contract is dead
Limited resources, limited hope. The best parents can hope for is to spend a fortune on educating their kids and maybe the kid goes to an elite college and then gets the joy of an engineering job working on improving how well ads perform. Information worker jobs used to have some promise of long term employment, but not anymore. Layoffs happen despite record profits. Layoffs used to be a dirty word in tech, which gave people a feeling of hope and the confidence to plan long term.
Now days? No job is safe, no industry is immune. When we replaced manufacturing jobs with service industry jobs the nation replaced reliable 9-5 jobs with benefits and a retirement package with jobs that have dynamically determined shifts and no benefits! Has anyone here looked into the life of a retail worker? In some businesses you don't even know when you'll be working until the shift schedule is posted each week, and even then you can be called in at any time! Can't really raise a kid under those circumstances, getting a baby sitter can take weeks notice and baby sitters love to cancel. Not that anyone can afford a baby sitter.
Well I can, because many tech jobs include baby sitters as a job perk, but, the people who really need one can't get one.
So naturally people aren't having kids. Houses are too expensive, food is too expensive, and because the last generation of families was small, support networks don't exist. We are supposed to raise kids in large groups, with aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews all there to help. Heck even preparing and eating dinner as a small family unit is really abnormal, historically people cooked together and ate together in groups of N > 4.
Many hands make for light work, including taking care of kids. The hardest part of having kids in modern day America is that you just don't have any time off, no time to relax. You never get to sleep in ever again, you never get any downtime. Friends with large families all living locally don't have this issue, kids are passed around from household to household, all playing with each other, a self organizing ball of chaos and noise and occasional bumps and bruises, but it is so much easier than trying to schedule play dates as often as possible.
And then there is the Next Best Alternative. Daycare costs between 30k-40k a year in major cities. Even if someone can afford 30k a year for daycare, they could also just spend that money on 3 amazing international trips each year! You aren't flying first class, but you can sure as heck stay in some nice resorts!
As most people "so, kid, or, at least twice a year you get to spend a couple weeks in any country you want", a lot of people are going to choose a life of leisure.
I don’t think it’s an economic problem. Some rich countries have done great to subsidize childcare and all that. Poor countries and poorer people within rich countries are having more kids.
I think it is a cultural issue and maybe even a health issue due to rising obesity. Some people delay “starting their lives” until nearly 40 at which point it becomes hard and even risky to have a kid. As noted, so many people are single as well. Why is that?
Many reasons, soundbites don't work to explain it.
> Some rich countries have done great to subsidize childcare and all that.
In rich counties, people have more desirable alternatives to having kids. Airfare is cheap. In high income countries, working professionals can fly around the world and enjoy a lifetime of partying their asses off. The DINK lifestyle is nice if you have money.
Like, why give that up?
Same reason my middle-upper class friends don't have dogs - dogs would mean less traveling.
Growing up poor, we had dogs, and vacations were camping, which the dogs could enjoy to. Kids + dogs + tent, it all works out if you have some money but not a lot of money.
> Poor countries and poorer people within rich countries are having more kids.
But even there the rate is dropping. Birth rates are plummeting all around the world.
> As noted, so many people are single as well. Why is that?
A variety of reasons!
1. Women don't need a man to provide basics like food and shelter anymore.
2. Social skills are at an all time low because people spend time on their phones rather than being outside. It used to be if it was a summer Saturday your choices for entertainment were reruns on TV, a book, or doing something outside, likely with other people. Socialization was forced because there was no alternative. Lack of social skills directly translates to people not forming relationships. Also just less time spent with other people means less chance to form long term relationships.
3. The instant release dopamine machines in our pockets have gotten people used to the idea that gratification should be instant. Relationships take time and work.
4. All the traditional ways people met are pretty much dead. 3rd places are dead, people don't meet through church anymore, it is generally not recommended to date co-workers anymore (though it obv. still happens), and the various types of semi-arranged marriages that used to happen don't anymore (even in western countries, for a long time young couples were nudged together by parents.) Another thing is, going back pre-1920s and our entire idea of how dating should work doesn't even represent the dominant world view then, so we have really less than 100 years of "stable" Western society to look back on to try and judge if the current match making system even works.
Given the multitude of factors, why would anyone expect people to be having kids? Young men don't know how to talk to women, young women don't know what healthy relationships look like, and married couples may very well not know a single other couple with kids to set a positive example of "a healthy family is possible!"
Of course things are broken. The real question is why people are confused about it!
"As long as you have women under conditions where they don't feel any sense of value, no self-worth, except as mothers, except as baby factories, they'll have a lot of children because that's the only way they can prove they're worth something." Isaac Asimov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zMxNdcwafA
Western nations have acted abhorrently by the assumption that Africans have valueless lives and need saviors. No thanks. We would do better to understand and be influenced by them in this area.
> In addition to the Great Recession and Covid, changing social, demographic, economic, and cultural factors also influenced attitudes about fertility, marriage, and children. These include greater educational and employment opportunities for women, the rapid increase in housing costs, the growing expense of children, limited access to child care and family leave, and changing patterns of cohabitation and immigration. Lower marriage rates account for much of the increase in childlessness, as fertility rates among never married women are lower than among woman who have been married. However, the number of married women who have not had a child is also higher than expected given historical trends.
> Just 48% of young Americans say having kids is important—the lowest ranking among the six life goals we measured. It signifies a generational shift away from traditional family formation.
Children have become a luxury good. Women are empowered to make other choices, and they are.
