More people just don't want kids.

Well I think the numbers are messed up. The cry of not enough kids is based on a declining tax base compared to non-contributers. It is like a ponzi scheme. My sister is a great great grandmother. She is likely to live old enough to be a great great great grandmother. That did not used to be so common.
 

Couldn't it just possibly be due to the impossible cost of housing right now? They don't want kids because they can't afford them! (This may have been addressed already; I haven't read this whole thread.)
 
Della said:
If you don't have a girl, who's going to take care of you when you're old?" Which seemed like the most selfish reason to have a child that I ever heard. Babies shouldn't be born with jobs already lined up.
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Right. No child should be expected to center their life around the parents. It’s nice if they live nearby and are helpful. It should never be expected that this be done.
 
Jules said:
Right. No child should be expected to center their life around the parents. It’s nice if they live nearby and are helpful. It should never be expected that this be done.
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I know someone who told me that her daughters told her that she needed to learn how to do the stuff (like bill paying) that their dad only did because what would she do if the dad died first? She said she told them, "You girls'll do all that for me; that's the only reason I had you." I made some kind of joke because I thought she was kidding and she said, "I'm not kidding! What else do you have kids for?!" o_O
 
Pepper said:
If you really want kids, you can afford them, IMO.
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Maybe they could afford the kids, but many young people live in tiny apartments, and are finding a decent place to live and raise a child is way out of their price range. Hopefully, prices will come down. Right now, it's impossible for many of them.

Not saying that's the only reason they don't want kids, but it is obviously one of them.
 
Pepper said:
If you really want kids, you can afford them, IMO.
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Not so....

In the Uk people who want to work rather than languishing on the dole having loads of kids at the taxpayers expense... are stuck between a rock and hard place if they're earning minimum wage.

Min wage here is £11.44 ph for over 21's less if under 21....

Imagine you work a 40 hour week in a supermarket or similar unskilled job... 40 x 11.44 = approx £457... take a third off for Nat Ins , and tax... that leaves £305... total £1220

Out of that you have to pay £1k per month in rent or Mortgage.. and that's really low.. most are paying more...

that leaves £220 ...to pay Gas, water, Electricity, Council tax ( huge )... car fuel, tax, insurance, ..and then food and clothing... ... ..absolutely impossible to do...the council tac and water bill would take u most of it on their own before anything else...... and so what would be left to feed , and clothe a child or 2..?.. Nothing ..zero, zilch....

so no matter how much that Basic wage person wants a child there is no way of affording it..if they work for a living..
 
When did we become fully human? What fossils and DNA tell us about the evolution of modern intelligence
When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there’s remarkably little agreement on this question. Fossils and DNA suggest people looking like us, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. Surprisingly, archaeology – tools, artefacts, cave art – suggest that complex technology and cultures, “behavioural modernity”, evolved more recently: 50,000-65,000 years ago.
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So I guess for 300,000 years or more the stork brought babies, elves built homes for us, and aliens provided free child care? And this only stopped recently?

Occam's Razor suggests not!
 
Back from backpacking, just now reading this thread.

Several women members commented that they don't want others pressuring them into having children. However the link didn't state that though there are those ordinary family oriented folk that like children, so have that view.

The OP link starts:

An increasing share of adults under 50 say they're unlikely to have kids — and the major reason is, well, they just don't want them, according to a report from Pew Research Center out Thursday morning. Why it matters: The U.S. fertility rate is at a historic low, posing problems for future economic growth, and the survey takes a crack at figuring out what's going on...

No, No, and NO! The real issue is Wall Street, banks, real estate corps, globalists, and their myriad army of wealth seekers are our real enemies. They are afraid of any societal attitude changes that may affect their long term wealth that greatly depends on endless growth and development including population growth. The last thing they want during their lifetimes are those like this old Counterculture person, regularly scaring others with talk of environmental doom and civilization collapse caused by endless growth.

In other words, their growth agenda is the ultimate Pyramid Scheme and we citizens are their foolish prey with future generations left holding the bag. So they will regularly send out manipulative news media stories like this. They also make sure our borders remain open letting in endless immigrants and do so by backdoor political deals because they are quite aware American citizens would puke if they talked honestly about their agendas. They have little concern what occurs after their gone and usually blurt out selfishly that others in the future will figure how to deal with it so put your head back in that hole in the sand.
 
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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Oh deary me. How is it selfish for a woman not to want to get pregnant, with all the changes that brings? How is it selfish for a man to not want to have kids in tow? Surely it's better that people who have no interest in children to not have them? Or is it better for them to have kids, but not really want them? It's not selfish, nor adolescent. It's the exact opposite. Seems to me, it takes a mature adult mindset to make a decision not to have children they don't really want.

I appreciate it's not a decision you agree with, but there's no need to trivialize it.
 
Muskrat said:
@dilettante …it is not selfish to make a choice to not have children. A person who has a child should choose to be a parent and take responsibility for all that comes with that. It is a commitment. A covenant. It should only be undertaken by those who want that child . And there is no shame in not wanting to undertake that responsibility.
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100%. I'd say it's a brave decision. But there are many reasons why someone might not want to have children. It's not like we owe a debt to society to make more humans.
 
This Daily Mail, Mail On Line headline is both eye catching and provocative. It reads, "At 55, I can finally admit that I hate being a mother." As yet I haven't read it, The Daily Mail loves headline grabbers and I noticed that instead of an author's name it simply read anonymous.
 
horseless carriage said:
This Daily Mail, Mail On Line headline is both eye catching and provocative. It reads, "At 55, I can finally admit that I hate being a mother." As yet I haven't read it, The Daily Mail loves headline grabbers and I noticed that instead of an author's name it simply read anonymous.
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It is likely behind a paywall? The MOL is desperately trying to get people to subscribe to read their content.
 
horseless carriage said:
This Daily Mail, Mail On Line headline is both eye catching and provocative. It reads, "At 55, I can finally admit that I hate being a mother." As yet I haven't read it, The Daily Mail loves headline grabbers and I noticed that instead of an author's name it simply read anonymous.
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There's the Hollywood version of life, and the reality. In the Hollywood version, families sit around playing games and eating meals, and love overcomes all, forgiveness is aplenty. In real life, mothers and fathers take drugs, become homeless, become predators, live on minimum wage, die young, and delegate the nurture of young-uns to older kids. Live isn't a walk in the park.

Children are all about sacrifice, no matter how you look at it. To give, something must be given up. Some people want that, some people don't. I can totally see there will be mothers and fathers who hate being parents. At the same time, they're probably not very good parents at that. Just as there are childless people who later wish they had make a different choice.

Let's be frank, there's nothing magical about having kids. You meet someone, you have a good time with them, and your body does the rest. What I mean is, it's not like it's a surprise at what happens when you play around. The kid comes out, and the ball is rolling. It's the simplest thing to do in the world, and if that defines you, or you think it makes you special, then I think you're setting the bar far too low. IMO YMMV.
 
I just read the article. Summary: A fairly well-off (thanks to her husband's company) stay at home mom bemoans the road not taken - the childfree road - and complains that raising children screwed her out of what could have/should have been more enjoyable way to spend 20 years of her life.

She became pregnant for the first time at 34, so hardly a dewy-eyed teen, and went on to have three more children over the subsequent four years.

"I find myself daydreaming about what kind of life I could have created for myself if I had never had children. Would I have soared to great career heights? Perhaps written a novel? Or left my husband for someone more exciting?"

(Spare me... you were working as a hair stylist, living in an "all-girls flat that was party central," when you met and marred a man of means who took you on exotic vacations. Hardly the likely glide path for reaching great career heights or novel writing.)

What she mostly expresses regret over is missing out on a lot of prime partying years, and imagines that now, at 55 and nearly empty-nested, she'll resume her twentysomething ways and carefree life.
Yeah, good luck with that, sweetheart.

My take - her problem is a lot less about having had children and more about her resentment over being forced into the world of adulting. My friends and I, some with children, some who remained childfree, stopped the "party-central" life well before age 34 because other options were more appealing.

She's setting herself up to have an affair, get a divorce, or both. Some random guy will flatter her with compliments about how youthful she is, and she'll drink it in like it's nectar from the gods.

Her desire for a second adolescence during this midlife crisis may cost her more than she can imagine. I've seen it happen more than once.
 
StarSong said:
I just read the article. Summary: A fairly well-off (thanks to her husband's company) stay at home mom bemoans the road not taken - the childfree road - and complains that raising children screwed her out of what could have/should have been more enjoyable way to spend 20 years of her life.

She became pregnant for the first time at 34, so hardly a dewy-eyed teen, and went on to have three more children over the subsequent four years.

"I find myself daydreaming about what kind of life I could have created for myself if I had never had children. Would I have soared to great career heights? Perhaps written a novel? Or left my husband for someone more exciting?"

(Spare me... you were working as a hair stylist, living in an "all-girls flat that was party central," when you met and marred a man of means who took you on exotic vacations. Hardly the likely glide path for reaching great career heights or novel writing.)

What she mostly expresses regret over is missing out on a lot of prime partying years, and imagines that now, at 55 and nearly empty-nested, she'll resume her twentysomething ways and carefree life.
Yeah, good luck with that, sweetheart.

My take - her problem is a lot less about having had children and more about her resentment over being forced into the world of adulting. My friends and I, some with children, some who remained childfree, stopped the "party-central" life well before age 34 because other options were more appealing.

She's setting herself up to have an affair, get a divorce, or both. Some random guy will flatter her with compliments about how youthful she is, and she'll drink it in like it's nectar from the gods.

Her desire for a second adolescence during this midlife crisis may cost her more than she can imagine. I've seen it happen more than once.
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That really is an articulate précis StarSong. Your unerring perception is right on the mark. Well said.
 
I know this is an old thread but I read a summary of a study on arctic squirrels, apparently published in the year 2000, about birth rate in wild animals, that I thought was interesting so sharing here:

"Animals can change their reproductive output depending on certain environmental conditions. And one of those environmental conditions is population density," notes Tim Karels, lead author of the paper who conducted the research as part of his PhD thesis at U of T. "So if you have lots of neighbours and you're competing for the same food, it can lower reproduction. And that's what we saw. At very high population densities, female ground squirrels basically shut down their reproduction, and that was done in order to sustain their own survival. When conditions were better, they would start reproducing again."​
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The arctic ground squirrel lives in the tundra, alpine and forested regions of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Alaska and hibernates over winter. Karels conducted the research between the spring of 1996 and spring of 1998 at the Arctic Institute Base at Kluane Lake, about 200 km west of Whitehorse.​
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Karels and Boonstra took groups of arctic ground squirrels that lived under certain conditions - one group was protected from predators via an electric fence, another was provided with food in the form of rabbit pellets, a third group was both protected from predators and given food, and the last served as the control group. In the spring of 1996, the food and protection were cut off to see how the squirrel populations from these experimental groups would respond.​
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"In high density populations - which resulted when the squirrels had both protection and food - the first thing we noticed is that females stopped reproducing. They got pregnant but terminated reproduction somewhere between pregnancy and when the babies should have appeared above ground after weaning," says Karels.​
​
​
 
HoneyNut said:
I know this is an old thread but I read a summary of a study on arctic squirrels, apparently published in the year 2000, about birth rate in wild animals, that I thought was interesting so sharing here:

"In high density populations - which resulted when the squirrels had both protection and food - the first thing we noticed is that females stopped reproducing. They got pregnant but terminated reproduction somewhere between pregnancy and when the babies should have appeared above ground after weaning," says Karels.​
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They had self-induced abortions. That's more proof — this time from nature — that banning abortions is a bad idea.
 
In other words most don't want any real responsibility. They want me time.

That being said there are variables in modern society one can consider including delaying but before you know 'delay' turns into too late.
 
I, and I assume at least some others who don't want children, don't want them because they know very well that not everyone--by a long shot--is suitable to be a parent. I was never suitable to be a parent and unfortunately, neither were either of my parents. Way too many people who should not be parents do it anyway and, in some cases irreparably, harm their children. What happens to way too many children is tragic and I don't understand why some people just essentially shrug it off by saying everyone should have children no matter what. What a mistaken, cruel thing to ever say.
 
officerripley said:
I, and I assume at least some others who don't want children, don't want them because they know very well that not everyone--by a long shot--is suitable to be a parent. I was never suitable to be a parent and unfortunately, neither were either of my parents. Way too many people who should not be parents do it anyway and, in some cases irreparably, harm their children. What happens to way too many children is tragic and I don't understand why some people just essentially shrug it off by saying everyone should have children no matter what. What a mistaken, cruel thing to ever say.
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Very well said, and I agree 100 %
 
Makes you wonder how it's possible there is any animal life on the planet at all.

Or could it be... bullshit?
 

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