More people just don't want kids.

fuzzybuddy said:
If people choose not to have kids, that is their right, and it's their decision.
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Maybe they just want a decent 72 years old and finally getting to retire, mandated by an amendment.
Every Citizen has to retire at 72. Illegal aliens now 50/50 keep on working. Haha Every 4 year the
Manditory retirement age increases a year. 2075 -- "73" -- 2080 -- 74 -- :coffee: --
________________________________________

No more early retirement golfing winters. ( No one wants to come here, No one wants to stay ) :ROFLMAO: ..
 

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VintageBetter said:
And as the Youngers stated on Reddit, “It’s the economy, stupid.” A starter home in major cities starts at $1,000,000.

Childcare in major cities is what? Like $40,000 to $50,000 a year.

They cannot afford to have children. May curses multiplied upon all real estate investment schemes.
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$1,000,000 starter homes are only in the very few top cost of living cities. $50,000 a year for child care is also only in the most expensive cities.

The average Tulsa, OK home value is $205,799, up 5.3% over the past year and goes to pending in around 12 days.
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In June 2024, home prices in Missouri were up 5.3% compared to last year, selling for a median price of $282,300.
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There are lot of prosperous cities where a nice 'starter' home is well under $400,000. See above.
 
Nobody should feel obligated or pressured to have kids, or dogs, or buy a house, or get married, etc. My kids are both married but are leaning toward not having children, never once have I considered that anything more than a personal choice. If my son doesn't have a son this branch of our surname will cease to continue. So what?

I get ticked off at all these societal norms people insist on as acceptable or not. As long as your life choices don't screw up others lives live however you like.
 
I'd be willing to pop out a few children right now, just to get some help dusting. Am I the only one or were we all used a dusting-servants as kids? Perhaps today's young people would want children if we explain how they can be used to do the household cleaning chores (while providing nice tax deductions too).
 
VintageBetter said:
And as the Youngers stated on Reddit, “It’s the economy, stupid.” A starter home in major cities starts at $1,000,000.

Childcare in major cities is what? Like $40,000 to $50,000 a year.

They cannot afford to have children. May curses multiplied upon all real estate investment schemes.
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In Ohio the median cost of a house is $236,000, major cities like Columbus were closer to $300,000. Houses definitely were a lot cheaper in the 1950's but the median income then was $3000 per year.

I think a big part of the, "we can't afford to have children," is that young families today want so much more than they did then. People in the 1950's were thrilled to have an 800 square foot Levitt home. Now they expect twice that much in a "starter," home. Just the term starter home is a new term with an expectation of constantly getting more. Young families expect to have two cars instead of one.

With lowered expectations, with a small house and one car, one person can usually stay home with the children until they're school age and never have to pay for child care at all.

I'm not saying anyone should have children if they don't want to, but just say so, don't blame the economy when you really just want a career outside the home. I think societal pressure today is running in the opposite direction. We've devalued the homemaker to the point that lots of women think they'll be looked down on if they don't have a paying job.
 
Della said:
I think societal pressure today is running in the opposite direction. We've devalued the homemaker to the point that lots of women think they'll be looked down on if they don't have a paying job.
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I disagree. How more trendy and American urban can you get from the Upper East Side? I pick up my grandson once a week from that location. I speak to mothers as well as stay at home fathers. They just take it to new & different levels. No one fears being looked down upon, no one I speak with.
 
I decided in my early 20s I didn't have the stamina to have kids. Good thing since autoimmune ovarian failure kicked in at 28 and my last period was the summer before I turned 31.

My reasons then were health ones, but I can understand the different reasons why people don't want kids now. Some are selfish reasons, some are not.

As for my decision in hindsight: I don't see anything but further global destabilization ahead and am glad I don't have children or grandchildren to face that.
 
It’s an interesting subject. You could probably write a book about it and somebody probably has. There are a lot of good thoughts here, most of them I agree with.

People used to have big families because they needed them. Some still do. Some religions promote large families. I think that’s partly why my brother and his wife had six kids. My wife and I had two sons. They were carefully planned and all we wanted.

Raising our boys was a joy. I can’t imagine our life without them. But, that was us. I have one granddaughter. She has been the highlight of our senior years. My wife worshiped her. She has said she never wants children. And, I admit that makes me a bit sad. It means we will have no descendants. No one will ever look us up in their family tree or treasure anything we leave behind.

On the other hand, I suspect the human race is in for some hard times. So, maybe it’s just as well.
 
Fertility rate: 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born The BBC is hardly known for a right-leaning bias.

What is going on?

The fertility rate - the average number of children a woman gives birth to - is falling.

If the number falls below approximately 2.1, then the size of the population starts to fall.

In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime.

Researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 - and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.
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Why are fertility rates falling?

It has nothing to do with sperm counts or the usual things that come to mind when discussing fertility.

Instead it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children.
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Why is this a problem?

You might think this is great for the environment. A smaller population would reduce carbon emissions as well as deforestation for farmland.

"That would be true except for the inverted age structure (more old people than young people) and all the uniformly negative consequences of an inverted age structure," says Prof Murray.
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Prof Murray adds: "It will create enormous social change. It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter and I wonder what the world will be like."

Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?
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Are there any solutions?

Countries, including the UK, have used migration to boost their population and compensate for falling fertility rates.

However, this stops being the answer once nearly every country's population is shrinking.

"We will go from the period where it's a choice to open borders, or not, to frank competition for migrants, as there won't be enough," argues Prof Murray.

Some countries have tried policies such as enhanced maternity and paternity leave, free childcare, financial incentives and extra employment rights, but there is no clear answer.
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IMO many of those large families, past and present, are a subtle form of child abuse.

I think kids are great but I don’t think that people should have more children than they can comfortably afford and give a good start in life.

I’m not talking about providing a privileged childhood but a childhood with the basics.

Millions of us grew up in modest homes with one bathroom, television, telephone, car, etc… and did just fine.

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Purely personal decision. In fact not having children would no doubt have enormous benefits. Think of the freedom, the money saved. Why on earth should anyone feel pressured to have kids anyway?
Many women don't feel at all maternal, many men do not wish to be tied down. Just like marriage is not essential. Also, children may not always be a blessing - far from it.

It is very tragic for those who yearn for children and cannot have them of course. That is a different matter. It's choice that matters.
 
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I won't judge people regardless of whether they have lots of kids or none. Some people just love kids and want a bunch of them. Others know that they are just not suited for parenthood. It's fine with me.

The world's population will go down. For various reasons, people are just not reproducing as much as in the past. This is good, because resources are also going to diminish. Arable land and water are becoming more scarce. The oceans are being over fished. The problem will be how to support those who for one reason or another are no longer able to work. It is going to be a challenge.
 
Is anybody else watching the wonderful Netflix series "Bridgerton?" Set in upper-class England around the year 1820, it shows what their attitudes were about marriage and childbearing. (I'm assuming it's at least somewhat accurate, even though it's basically a romantic satire.) The girls are groomed to find a husband as early as possible, and to start popping out kids, the more the better. The main family, the Bridgertons, have 8 kids. That is considered the one and only function that a woman has, She is literally treated as a collection of body organs, and to add insult to injury, the girls were kept in nearly complete ignorance about sex. They were pushed into marriage with somebody "suitable" with no understanding of where babies come from, just that somehow they will have them!

If this series is even partially accurate, how incredibly cruel and ignorant that society was! (Not singling out England, it was probably true throughout the entire western world.) They apparently endured enormous pressure to marry very early, as a kind of business arrangement, and to start producing the proper number of kids. Some religious cults are still maintaining this practice, even in this day and age.

I can only imagine what life must have been like for any women who might have been lesbians (although I suppose the gay men didn't have it much better,) And even for those who weren't, there were probably dozens of reasons that some of them didn't have kids, either by choice or not. How can anybody dare to label someone else "selfish" for this?

The most important and precious people in my life are my children, grandkids, and great-grandkids. But probably the reason they are so important and precious to me is that my husband and I wanted them.
 
Sunny said:
Is anybody else watching the wonderful Netflix series "Bridgerton?" Set in upper-class England around the year 1820, it shows what their attitudes were about marriage and childbearing. (I'm assuming it's at least somewhat accurate, even though it's basically a romantic satire.) The girls are groomed to find a husband as early as possible, and to start popping out kids, the more the better. The main family, the Bridgertons, have 8 kids. That is considered the one and only function that a woman has, She is literally treated as a collection of body organs, and to add insult to injury, the girls were kept in nearly complete ignorance about sex. They were pushed into marriage with somebody "suitable" with no understanding of where babies come from, just that somehow they will have them!

If this series is even partially accurate, how incredibly cruel and ignorant that society was! (Not singling out England, it was probably true throughout the entire western world.) They apparently endured enormous pressure to marry very early, as a kind of business arrangement, and to start producing the proper number of kids. Some religious cults are still maintaining this practice, even in this day and age.

I can only imagine what life must have been like for any women who might have been lesbians (although I suppose the gay men didn't have it much better,) And even for those who weren't, there were probably dozens of reasons that some of them didn't have kids, either by choice or not. How can anybody dare to label someone else "selfish" for this?

The most important and precious people in my life are my children, grandkids, and great-grandkids. But probably the reason they are so important and precious to me is that my husband and I wanted them.
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Do you remember Ina who used to be a member of this forum and died a few years back ?.. she wasn't much older than me, but she'd had children from age 13.... I can't remember where in the US she lived but @Happyflowerlady and Ina were great friends so she'll be able to remember where she lived.. but yes even just back in the 60's US there was children giving birth as young as 13...
 
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Ina said that she was forced to get married when she was a teenager, by her father. She was able to get divorced from that marriage, and later met and married the man that she loved for the rest of her life, and they had a son together. Ina lived in Texas, and her son helped her become a member of this forum.
When she got her first iPad, she had NO clue how to set it up and use it, and I messaged her to help her with the iPad. It progressed to phone calls, and then a visit to me (in Alabama) after her husband passed away.

I am not sure how her parents were able to get her married at such a young age, but they must have been able to sign paperwork for her to do that, and she did not know that she had any way to refuse what her parents told her to do. Even so, she dearly loved her son from that first marriage , and was broken-hearted when he passed away at a young age.
She lived through a lot in her life, and I was glad to be her friend.

This is Ina, modeling the crocheted shawl that I made her for Christmas before she passed away.

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Babymaking is big business. It helps government. It helps religions. It sells products. It keeps our society running the way it does. The more people who think it’s the be-all, end-all, the better off the people in power will be.
~~Laura Carroll, childfree advocate and author

If you don’t want kids with all your heart, and you don’t have the gift for raising them, and you can’t afford them, you will produce a monstrous human being that will be a curse and a burden to society all of its life. Having kids is like brain surgery—you aren’t doing anybody any good by DABBLING.
~~Response to Kidfree Survey done by author Kaye D. Walters

Choosing to have children is like choosing to play the bagpipes: you must do it well or not at all. Anything in between and you’ll really annoy your neighbors.
~~Nina Paley, cartoonist and animator
 
A broad subject with no simple answers. I get wait until they're in a good enough job or have some kind of financial stability but others want to play and before you know it when playtime is over so is life.

I've known people who turned down jobs and promotions just to keep their current lifestyle which is go work and basically play, drink or entertain themselves in all their spare time. Too many aren't worried about settling down they're still looking for the next party in their mid 40s which is basically how they're going to finish out their life.

From what I've read/heard is that what a young adult is doing their early to mid 20s is how they are personally going to live most of their adult life. I'm not talking career but lifestyle and priorities. If they aren't serious and matured somewhat for many that is the person one might see until they're final days. That's also a sign of partying too much when young because they say maturity stops at the age one starts drinking and drugging. I know several people who started in their teens and they will be applying for social security as a childless adult.

Much of it comes back to delayed maturity because a mature person is more serious about life.
 
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Trish said:
Why would you think my comment had anything at all to do with incest?
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Because your premise that all humans have the right to have children with whomever they wished without having to offer any explanation concerning its moral rightness to anyone seemed all-inclusiveness. My apologies if I misunderstood your intended meaning.
 
dilettante said:
It is rooted in selfishness and extended adolescence inherent in excessive urbanization. Researchers have long noted the same thing in overcrowded populations of rats.

Biologically the 20s are the prime childbearing years. Even the 30s is pushing it, and once women try in their 40s they have few good eggs left and resort to fertility treatments and in-vitro fertilization and if they produce a kid the incidence of birth defects and health problems is very high.
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No, women in their 40's don't have a high risk of heath problems and birth defects - they have a higher risk than younger women - that isnt at all the same thing.

And no, it is not selfish to choose not to have children - if you want to have children and are capable of parenting, do so.

If not, then don't.

Do what is right for you and any children you may or may not have.

It isn't any more selfish or moral high ground either way.
 
Many of the young child's say under 2 or even 1 year of age are from Druggy Parents.
So many are living hell young pre-teen or even teen lives with a druggy parent or less.
knowing this is a fact doesn't change the outcome for many of these young ones. Social
Workers are not exactly the greatest ending is a great fact of knowledge. Gay's
 
Happyflowerlady said:
Ina said that she was forced to get married when she was a teenager, by her father. She was able to get divorced from that marriage, and later met and married the man that she loved for the rest of her life, and they had a son together. Ina lived in Texas, and her son helped her become a member of this forum.
When she got her first iPad, she had NO clue how to set it up and use it, and I messaged her to help her with the iPad. It progressed to phone calls, and then a visit to me (in Alabama) after her husband passed away.

I am not sure how her parents were able to get her married at such a young age, but they must have been able to sign paperwork for her to do that, and she did not know that she had any way to refuse what her parents told her to do. Even so, she dearly loved her son from that first marriage , and was broken-hearted when he passed away at a young age.
She lived through a lot in her life, and I was glad to be her friend.

This is Ina, modeling the crocheted shawl that I made her for Christmas before she passed away.

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I remember Ina very fondly. She was a woman with a most forgiving soul.

As for child marriages in US, I understand that in four* states there is no legislation that specifies the minimum age for legal marriage. In Ina's time there were more states where child marriages were not uncommon.

* For up to date information - Child marriage in the United States - Wikipedia
 

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