More people just don't want kids.

Radrook said:
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.
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No 'if' about it @Radrook, you absolutely misunderstood but, thank you for the apology.

To be clear, my comments were in response to "more people just don't want kids" and had no connection to incest or any other immoral act. (y)
 

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.

View attachment 358140
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@Happyflowerlady
Thank you so much for sharing this lovely photo and story of your friendship with Ina. I, too, have made lasting friendships with people I've met on forums .. a couple of them, for some 15 yrs. It's lovely that you were able to meet in person.
 
Where I live, in white Christian Knothole PA, people prefer to have kids. Then, when the kids start mouthing off and causing damage around the house, they boot them out into the wild. Anything can happen then. All are a pain in the butt to neighbors, shopkeepers, teachers and so on. Their parents are idiots who have no idea about anything...including what is happening with their offspring. I would encourage these people to not have children. Yet they will. It is extremely annoying more than sad.
 
Judycat said:
Where I live, in white Christian Knothole PA, people prefer to have kids. Then, when the kids start mouthing off and causing damage around the house, they boot them out into the wild. Anything can happen then. All are a pain in the butt to neighbors, shopkeepers, teachers and so on. Their parents are idiots who have no idea about anything...including what is happening with their offspring. I would encourage these people to not have children. Yet they will. It is extremely annoying more than sad.
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Many SF members tell of their childhood in such a way that describes a childhood filled with abuse, or alcoholism, or abandonment. Did anyone have an idyllic childhood? Would it have been better for them to not have the children who now frequent the SF's? I think not. The world is filled with misery and suffering so that is a given. Everyone seems to have an opinion about how to care for the children, but if everyone knows how, then why all the moaning about bad parents?

If people want or don't want children, they get borned, and live where they sprout no matter what the circumstances. The world is in such turmoil now, that the new generations will be filled with confusion and hatred. How can they not? So, the coming generations will be much harder to deal with than the ones we have experienced. To be a parent in the future will be more than a challenge, so many people do not want to add to their own misery by having more responsibility than they can handle.
 
Trish said:
No 'if' about it @Radrook, you absolutely misunderstood but, thank you for the apology.

To be clear, my comments were in response to "more people just don't want kids" and had no connection to incest or any other immoral act. (y)
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Yes, I understand the focus of the thread. However, I was responding to a statement on this thread which claimed that humans should never be told whom they can or can't have children with because having children is a human right. So my response is indeed very relevant to that specific claim. Is it against forum rules to respond to such a claim?
 
Della said:
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.
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But in the 1950s many of these “starter homes” cost about the equvalent of one year’s salary.

In other words, if an executive made $35,000 a year, he could find a house that cost that in the 1960s and it might even be a 4-bedroom, pretty good size house.

That used to be the formula in the old days - a house price should be equal to what you and/or you and your partner earn in a year.

We (I say we, but I mean Wall Street and the Federal Reserve) threw out that very sane formula long ago because higher home prices = higher property taxes and the cities and states want tax revenue! And higher home prices mean the bank profits are looking great every quarter and that’s what banks want - to make stockholders happy.

I don’t think we can blankly say, “People want more now, bigger houses now” without actually doing a lot of research on that. If we said, “Do you want an 800 sq. ft. home that costs no more than your yearly current annual salary?”, then we could get some real data.

But, as far as I know, the gov’t. doesn’t do research of consumers asking them what they want in housing. No - instead, they listen to the banking and RE lobbyists who TELL THEM, “We can tell you what home buyers want."

That’s like listening to the tobacco lobby when they tell Congress, "Americans really want to die from lung cancer."
 
Trish said:
Childless people should not feel they owe anyone else an explanation just as, those with children, should not have to explain why they chose to be a parent.
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@Radrook This is what I posted and which you responded to. ☝️

Radrook said:
Yes, I understand the focus of the thread. However, I was responding to a statement on this thread which claimed that humans should never be told whom they can or can't have children with because having children is a human right. So my response is indeed very relevant to that specific claim. Is it against forum rules to respond to such a claim?
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I have not read all the previous posts but, looking back in an attempt to understand why you reacted to my post with links and a video regarding incest, I noticed this post above my original post, which does refer to having a child being a human right etc.

👇

Warrigal said:
Having a child is a human right. So is the decision not to have children.

History shows us that when some people decide who can or cannot have/raise children the result can be forced sterilisation (Nazi Germany) or forced pregnancy (US slavery). It can also lead to stolen children (Australia)
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I think it looks as if you are responding to the wrong poster.
 
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seadoug said:
Perhaps before you post you should do some research rather than describing anyone who doesn't want children as "selfish". We are not living in the age of Ozzie & Harriet. In many cases it now takes two incomes to support a household. Women no longer greet their working husbands with aprons on and meals waiting.

Also, young women now represent 60% of college grads so if they no longer wish to become baby-makers rather than pursuing enriching careers, good for them.

Also, do some research on the immigration rate in Japan vs. the US. They are vastly different, which is a major reason Japan is in this predicament and the US should be just fine. I'll look it up for you.

Japan's immigration rate is among the lowest in the world on a per capita basis. As of 2022, foreign nationals made up about 2% of Japan's population, which is lower than South Korea but higher than China. In contrast, the foreign-born percentage of the United States is near an all-time high of around 12%.

As for Japan's young people choosing not to have children...

Experts point to several factors behind the low birth rate. The country’s high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, meaning fewer couples are having kids. Urban couples are also often far from extended family who could help provide support.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/23/asia/japan-kishida-birth-rate-population-intl-hnk/index.html
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Child care is a huge problem in the U.S. and many other developed nations, although I have read that in the more Socialized 😱! economies, it’s not as horrid an issue because child care workers’ pay is subsidized by the taxes. I’ve of course also read that many
Socialized 🙀! economies give new parents the opion of up to a YEAR off, with at least partial pay, when they have a baby.

That is a whole year, with pay, to bond with your child and not become homeless because you made that choice. And you will still have a job to return to after that year. Laws ban your employer from being a jerk-wad and not rehiring you as punishment for having a child.

That’s what some countries do with their taxes instead of funding wars and subsidizing powerful corporations.

But, here in America, we don’t have many laws to protect parenting. The KOSA Act will now go to Congress for approval and we’ll see how many of our so-called representatives say they are huge fans of kids killing themselves thanks to online challenges totally unregulated by social media.

If the U.S. wants us to have babies, they have to make it easier to be a parent. KOSA is one tiny step in that direction.

Kids Online Safety Act - Wikipedia
 
VintageBetter said:
But the nation’s independence was based, in part, on the right to pursue happiness.

It was not based on “the obligation to understand that all the other people in the world, most of whom you will never meet, get to tell you how to live your life”.

If you are telling youngers, “There’s 8 biliion people out there telling you not to have kids”, I would encourage the youngers to reply, “I don’t care. Those 8 billion are going to be a family to ME.”

The arrogance to deny people the right and comfort of having their own families - that is just a stunning amount of arrogance. I’m not picking on you, fuzzy, for saying that. I know you’re just repeating an Internet-popular meme.

But COME ON. May as well sterilize all dogs too because we have far too many stray dogs in America and you and your family do not need a dog, ever, even if you love them. NO DOGS FOR ANYONE in your Perfect Future.

No dogs for anyone and no children. There. Two problems easily solved. (By the way, this is also why we overthrew the monarchy so many decades ago.)
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I meant to say, "Those 8 billion are NOT going to be a family to ME.”

People throw around that word “family” very loosely today. Every time I hear a business say, “We’re a family. Join our family”, I think of The Office’s Michael Scott and how he treated his work “family”. To him, family meant they have to be there for him or else they would suffer the consequences.

I also think, “OK, well if your workplace is a family and my rent is due in a week, but I don't get paid from you for two weeks, can I get an early advance from you my work “family” so I can pay the rent on time?”

The answer is usually no. It’s not so much a family that they will give a **** if your rent is late and you get threatened with a three day or quit notice.
 
VintageBetter said:
But in the 1950s many of these “starter homes” cost about the equvalent of one year’s salary.

In other words, if an executive made $35,000 a year, he could find a house that cost that in the 1960s and it might even be a 4-bedroom, pretty good size house.

That used to be the formula in the old days - a house price should be equal to what you and/or you and your partner earn in a year.

We (I say we, but I mean Wall Street and the Federal Reserve) threw out that very sane formula long ago because higher home prices = higher property taxes and the cities and states want tax revenue! And higher home prices mean the bank profits are looking great every quarter and that’s what banks want - to make stockholders happy.

I don’t think we can blankly say, “People want more now, bigger houses now” without actually doing a lot of research on that. If we said, “Do you want an 800 sq. ft. home that costs no more than your yearly current annual salary?”, then we could get some real data.

But, as far as I know, the gov’t. doesn’t do research of consumers asking them what they want in housing. No - instead, they listen to the banking and RE lobbyists who TELL THEM, “We can tell you what home buyers want."

That’s like listening to the tobacco lobby when they tell Congress, "Americans really want to die from lung cancer."
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Just a quick Google search says: "In 1955, the average home in the United States cost around $18,400, which was about 5.4 times the average annual income of $3,400"
2010s: The average new home ($292,700) offers 924 square feet per person (2.59 people per household, 2,392 total square feet) — three times the space afforded in the 1950s.
 
Della said:
Just a quick Google search says: "In 1955, the average home in the United States cost around $18,400, which was about 5.4 times the average annual income of $3,400"
2010s: The average new home ($292,700) offers 924 square feet per person (2.59 people per household, 2,392 total square feet) — three times the space afforded in the 1950s.
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Median income for males was about $62,000 in 2020 and about $50,000 for females.

5 X $50,000 = $250,000. There is no such thing as a $250,000 house within about 40 miles of where I live. Can find one if you drive 60 miles. A 60 mile, one-way commute to a job center will take a person about 2-hours one way, so that’s 4 hours driving every day.

TRULY, some families are living this way. Maybe one partner will have a city job and spend 20 hours a week on the highways and the other partner will have a much lower paying local job so she (it’s usually always a she) can be close to the kids as they are at school.

If this ideal couple (and these are only median incomes) are making $112,000 a year together, both working FT, they can find a house closer to the city for $560,000 but it will be a DUMP in a bad neighborhood and usually surrounded by bad high schools.

GOD FORBID one of them loses a job or need to take time off to care for a child. Then that little $560,000 dump of a house in a very bad neighborhood is at risk of being lost.

I’m saying the $1,000,000 “starter home” is unsustainable and the economy had better wake up to that.

And in some major cities, an Act of God will wipe out many of those million-dollar homes, and then what will the tech industry say about their Utopias then? (Besides “There is no God” of course.) We don’t know when that will happen, but we know it will eventually in California. It always does.

And in NY - floods. In FL, hurricanes. In TX and LA, hurricanes and floods. We really must change how we think about housing in this nation.

Step 1: It has to be a human right - some kind of shelter in this killer weather has to be a human right. Not an afterthought.
 
VintageBetter said:
There is no such thing as a $250,000 house within about 40 miles of where I live.
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Same way here. There is however, a mobile home for sale here in town for $225,000, in a park not on a piece of property mind you but in a mobile home park where you'll also have to pay prob. $600-$700/month space rent. And yeah, it's really nice, only 2 years old, 3 bedrm, 2 bath, 1500 sq. feet; but almost a quarter of a million for a mobile home, in a park, with at least another $600/month coming out of your pocket. So you can imagine what conventional homes on even small lots cost around here anyway.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Just in the last few years, there has been a 10% increase in the number of people, who don't want to have children. It's 62% of young women and 50% of young men.
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-data
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Given the state of the planet I can understand why. My son is 25 and never want to bring a child into this world . I am sad but I agree with that way of thinking. He is my youngest son . Did not k ow I would have him after I already had three others during my 17 year marriage. I was in my mid late thirties when I had him. Before it all went to crap. To be honest if I had known the way it would be I might not had any children at all
 
VintageBetter said:
Median income for males was about $62,000 in 2020 and about $50,000 for females.

5 X $50,000 = $250,000. There is no such thing as a $250,000 house within about 40 miles of where I live. Can find one if you drive 60 miles. A 60 mile, one-way commute to a job center will take a person about 2-hours one way, so that’s 4 hours driving every day.

TRULY, some families are living this way. Maybe one partner will have a city job and spend 20 hours a week on the highways and the other partner will have a much lower paying local job so she (it’s usually always a she) can be close to the kids as they are at school.

If this ideal couple (and these are only median incomes) are making $112,000 a year together, both working FT, they can find a house closer to the city for $560,000 but it will be a DUMP in a bad neighborhood and usually surrounded by bad high schools.

GOD FORBID one of them loses a job or need to take time off to care for a child. Then that little $560,000 dump of a house in a very bad neighborhood is at risk of being lost.

I’m saying the $1,000,000 “starter home” is unsustainable and the economy had better wake up to that.

And in some major cities, an Act of God will wipe out many of those million-dollar homes, and then what will the tech industry say about their Utopias then? (Besides “There is no God” of course.) We don’t know when that will happen, but we know it will eventually in California. It always does.

And in NY - floods. In FL, hurricanes. In TX and LA, hurricanes and floods. We really must change how we think about housing in this nation.

Step 1: It has to be a human right - some kind of shelter in this killer weather has to be a human right. Not an afterthought.
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Are we going to talk about house prices in America or just California and New York?

By the way I haven't heard the ratio of income to house prices in your city, but I'll just bet the average income is higher than the median.
My brother lived in San Francisco from 1968 to 2015. One time he told me he was staying overtime for VISA on New Years Eve and I said that was too bad and he said he didn't mind, he was getting an extra $2000 for it. At that time my annual income was $8000. He always made money hand over fist in California, enough to quit every few years, travel around Europe for 6 months, and then go back and get another job. He never saved much, so when he retired he came to Ohio, bought a little house and was comfy for the rest of his life.

If young couples want a house and children and they can't afford it in California, they can always move. Almost my entire West Virginia High School class moved out of state to find jobs.

In Ohio, we had a new 2100 sq ft house custom built on a quarter acre lot in 2005 for $230,000. It would sell for about 280 now.
 
Della said:
young couples want a house and children and they can't afford it in California, they can always move
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Not everyone can just move like that; sometimes you have family members (elderly or soon-to-be-elderly parents, grandparents, siblings who need your help etc.) or other situations that make it either impossible or difficult to just move. And I keep hearing that, especially on this site for one, nobody wants people from other states (especially California) moving into “their” state.
 
Della said:
Are we going to talk about house prices in America or just California and New York?

By the way I haven't heard the ratio of income to house prices in your city, but I'll just bet the average income is higher than the median.
My brother lived in San Francisco from 1968 to 2015. One time he told me he was staying overtime for VISA on New Years Eve and I said that was too bad and he said he didn't mind, he was getting an extra $2000 for it. At that time my annual income was $8000. He always made money hand over fist in California, enough to quit every few years, travel around Europe for 6 months, and then go back and get another job. He never saved much, so when he retired he came to Ohio, bought a little house and was comfy for the rest of his life.

If young couples want a house and children and they can't afford it in California, they can always move. Almost my entire West Virginia High School class moved out of state to find jobs.

In Ohio, we had a new 2100 sq ft house custom built on a quarter acre lot in 2005 for $230,000. It would sell for about 280 now.
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Yeah, well, I don’t care about “median” stats because they make politicians feel great.

The Median, as you know, means that 50% of women are making less than $50,000 a year and 50% are making more.

The politicians only care about the upper half of those earners. They do not give a flying fart about women making less than $50,000 a year.

I’ll say that again: They do not give a flying fart about women making less than $50,000 a year. (I said it twice to indict both major parties.)

If they CARED they would help incentivize or push along homes being built for that LOWER HALF of the income scale.

Likewise, they would stop giving OKs to all the god-cursed luxury apartments. Those are not just being built or old buildings renovated in NY and CA. They are happening all over because RE investors see how much CA and NY are getting for rent, and they want to charge that for their slum in Alabama too.

Renters pay it because they need shelter. You should read Reddit sometime and see the kinds of stories renters post there. Don’t imagine slum-lords are gone. They are alive and well and some of them should go to prison.

That’s the other part the politicians always get wrong. They will say, “If renters don’t like the rents they can live somewhere cheaper.” BULL-LONEY.

They do not seem to understand that landlords have banded together, like a cartel, and if the building next door thinks they should change $2,000 for a studio apt., his neighbor landlord will charge $2,100. And so it goes, every year raising the rent 10% or more if there are not laws, with no one looking out for the renters.

Politicians from both parties live in a fantasy world populated by lies the RE lobbyists whisper to them.
 
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Teacher Terry said:
You never answered the question about whether you had children. It’s likely you have none which according to your reasoning is extremely selfish.
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Not that it is any of your business or has any impact on the discussion, but yes I have 3 kids.

Why so many personal attacks in this thread? Even the simping beta males are barking like little dogs under your skirts. Sheesh.
 

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