> because I have to raise two young children
It’s a missed opportunity for posts like the link to also mention and reinforce the importance of family planning. Many go into setting up a family because of peer pressure without assessing that it’s a very long term commitment. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can, of course. Maybe raising awareness that having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century could be something we do more of.
If you wait until everything is planned, ready and accounted for you'll never have kids.
Even if you reach that point, you're likely now at the age where fertility problems become a real issue.
If you want to have kids do it when you're in your early 20s.
This is factually false :) and if you’re really worried, there are many options available to you to preserve what you will need or consider adoption - there are so many humans being born without a family after all.
Most people I know realize they should have had kids sooner once they have them. Adoption is also not that easy, there are plenty of cases where adoption causes kidnapping.
How does adoption cause kidnapping?
Birth parent has regrets and wants "their" kid back?
I agree with you on a factual basis, but you understand that a large amount of people have a deep emotional instinct to not be ok with those options, right?
Indeed, that’s what I mean by raising awareness. It takes time to change such deeply rooted beliefs. I think if humans are to prosper and resolve planet-wide challenges like global warming, we need to be better at managing resources and we need to work together as a species, not separate counties fending for themselves.
Well, I'm not sure I agree with convincing people to not feel this way, but its admirable that you are putting in effort to change the world in a way that fits your morals
This sort of "hurry up or it'll be too late" attitude is a great way to figure out that you don't want to have kids after it's too late to make that choice.
> you'll never have kids
Which is also OK. It's financially smart to realize you don't have the resources and not have kids.
If {some subset of the government, rich people, people who control the economy} want more people to have kids, which is something I keep hearing from that class of people: They need to collectively figure out how to put more money into the pockets of people. Higher salaries, drastic tax cuts, cheaper housing, more people will be financially ready and more kids will happen as a result. Also, work hours need to be standardized at 4 hours/day per person OR costs of living need to be designed that 1 parental income is enough.
i agree with most of your points, especially the reduction of work hours, but cost is not the issue that keeps people from having kids. it's actually the reverse. the more money people have, the less likely they have kids.
the problem is lifestyle and career demands.
I think it's also because high middle class earners are financially smart (don't buy things if they don't have the money), AND health-smart (realize their body's needs, including sleep) so they choose logically not to have kids, because they do not have the resources for it, and will not sacrifice their own well-being just to have kids.
The upper class is financially smart, AND has the resources (20+ years of child rearing costs already secured upfront, ability to hire night nannies, ability to take a few years away from work without income, own a home and not at the mercy of rent increases), so they have kids.
The lower class is often not financially smart, is not health smart, and systematically poisoned to sacrifice themselves and buy things they cannot afford. They are given insufficient resources and told that they should have kids, so they do.
The lower class is often not financially smart, is not health smart, and systematically poisoned to buy things they cannot afford, including kids, so they have kids.
i don't believe that is true.
raising kids is not that expensive. what is expensive is the high expectations for what you should spend on your kids with that middle class and high earners have. like sending kids to college.
> raising kids is not that expensive
Huh? In a world where people have zero job security, could get put on some layoff or 15%-per-year PIP quota any time and lose their income at the whim of some politics 5 levels above, and any random health issue could cost hundreds of thousands due to insurance not paying, I'd say as a self-proclaimed financially literate person, that you'd need to save up a couple million in cash and set it aside to even begin considering kids.
I could be on the chopping block tomorrow at work and then have to downsize my lifestyle next week, but I'm prepared to downsize as a child-less person. If I didn't have the entire course of child-rearing costs saved up in cash I wouldn't consider starting the process. If children cost $2 million over the entire course of their life, I need to have $2 million now. In cash. That's the financially smart way in an income-uncertain world; you don't ever assume things that you don't already have.
20 years ago, job security was pretty good, you could relax and saving up the full cost in cash was not a prerequisite. You could throw your money into a mutual fund and get rich, because the US had sane economic leaders. You were virtually guaranteed a job if you had skills. None of this is guaranteed anymore. Nowadays, you either have it or you don't; the system guarantees you nothing about the future.
And if one wants to avoid that chopping block in today's corporate work environments, working nights and weekends is a good start, but then you'd have no time for kids.
I think those people realize this, but it's a bit like global warming. They like their lifestyles.
having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century
on the contrary. global population growth will plateau in a few decades, and negative population growth is already a problem in many countries, like all western countries, south korea, and also china.
Stop looking it country by country. Globally, the trend is that of an increasing population. And fast. Humans are reproducing at unsustainable level.
The number is still rising but the growth rate is plummeting.
https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/03/ourworldin...
It’s a trend and it’s slowing down not plummeting. And even if it is, there are already more of us than we know how to sustain.
The problem at hand is not growth rate slowing down, it’s humans divided in tiny pockets of countries burning through what little we have left of natural resources.
People who have kids today, do so knowing that their children will most certainly be displaced by natural disasters.
there are already more of us than we know how to sustain
what is the evidence for that? if that were true then we would have lot's of people going hungry, but that's simply not the case. poverty is getting reduced world wide. if we could not sustain the current population, we should have lots of people dying from hunger and the population should stop growing. but the reason why population is growing especially in africa is exactly because the growth is still sustainable. if it wasn't, then it could not be growing.
In 100 years, "us" is going to be Elon Musk's grandchildren, people from Niger, etc. and none of them are going to think like you whether they have to move or not.
here is a more current graph that predicts the growth rate to become negative in the 2080s:
https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=900&type=Probabilis...