That's because it's a known trend:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2018/06/11/mille...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201804/sh...

https://www.parents.com/parents-magazine/parents-perspective...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-havi...

Yeah, so that reinforces my point. Millenials aren't going to buy up those suburban homes.

Shaming people for intensely personal choices is rude. Cut it out.

Your argument basically presupposes that there’s something desirable about suburban homes, and that people not buying them is abnormal. I find this both unconvincing and historically incoherent.

My argument is that not having children en masse as a group goes against biology. It's happening in a lot of places too.

https://www.businessinsider.com/do-it-for-denmark-ad-campaig...

It's not shaming to point out a thing is happening or that it a thing is biologically necessary to further the human race. You're welcome to call it anything you want, but there's a lot of "shaming" that's gone in the other direction as well. I've watched it my entire life.

Desired home locations are just a side effect.

Okay, then I’d argue that having 2 kids goes against biology. And that moving to a suburban home and schooling your kids rather than working them in the field is unnatural.

That is after all, how humanity worked for a few Millenia.

If people don't reproduce, people stop existing.

You're arguing for the Amish.

Yes, having kids is (currently) still the main way to propagate our species. It may not be so in the future and/or when lifespans increase many times it may make more sense to make much fewer kids.

Even today, with a global fertility rate of 2.5 children per woman and a population of over 7 billion people I don't think there's any need to worry about biological mandates. On the contrary, I think that in developed countries where each human being consumes much more (and consequently generates more waste) than other countries the birth rate should be heavily lowered. Of course, our economy/society may not be engineered for that but better start doing it sooner than later.

Having access to automobiles, vaccination, running water, and anti-biotics goes against biology.

On the other hand, getting eaten by a tiger, living with ringworms, having your teeth fall out before middle age, or having 50/50 odds of dying by the age of 4 is perfectly natural, does not go against biology.

I don't think biology is a great litmus test for how we want to structure society.

Aside from automobiles, the other examples you have are things humans have done to further the survival of the species. More advanced versions of seeking food and shelter essentially.

Which is a natural expectation of the species...

What if the survival of the species requires us to take steps to, over generations, reduce our population to ~1 billion?

Or maybe people realize the raising kids is an enormous cost from both money and time. Maybe it's selfish, but myself and many of my millennial friends would rather spend their prime earning and health years doing what they want rather than what they "have to" do for kids.

Yeah, also costs are rising at an insane rate. Health care and college are both an order of magnitude higher than they were when millenials were children, and even then many of us saw our parents work hard and still not build any savings until their kids were on their own. I haven't bothered looking for it but it would be interesting to see the difference in cost of raising a child over the past century

Just do yourself a favor and think long and hard about whether or not that's going to sustain you for the remainder of your 70-80 years on this planet.

Maybe not, but having kids doesn't seem particularly more likely to sustain them, does it?

Kids are the easiest, most straightforward way to give purpose to your life. You can find purpose in other ways, but kids are pretty much a sure bet. If you're not going to have kids, you should have at least given some thought to what else is going to keep you moored. That's all I'm advocating for.

> It's because somehow, an entire generation has grown up with the idea that the one biologically necessary act to further the survival of the species...is not a good idea.

No, because they don't believe they're financially stable enough to support children[1]. Millennials have dealt with stagnant wages and rising housing costs.

(While some of the responses to that story ([1]) do indicate a desire to do things other than raise children, many of the responses indicate a desire, but a lack of ability. Additionally, leveling off the population growth of humanity would likely have benefits for the environment, though certainly some current government schemes assume infinite growth, and those will have a bad time.)

I'm personally in the "can't" not "won't" bucket. Real-estate in SV is nuts, and I will have to (as James Mickens calls it) complete the "sisyphean task" of escaping SV and its housing crisis.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-havi...

Anecdote of one. 36, wife and two kids. Have a quarter acre of land, a pool, and a 2600 sq ft house in a Tier 2 city for ~$200k. Why would I ever choose higher density and city living? I would not pay more for a lower quality of life (and distance means little to me, as I work from home and my kids don't go to school).

I happily bought my suburban home instead of living close to others in a condo or a townhouse.

Yep! This is the "smart for the individual, dumb for the group" type of a dilemma. It absolutely makes sense for you to do this, individually. As a society, it's rather undesirable for people to live this way. Your lifestyle is being subsidized by (mostly poorer) people living in dense areas [1], and by the externalities we all deal with: pollution from extra driving, lawn care (leaf blowers, gas powered lawn mowers, weed wackers, etc), otherwise unnecessary infrastructure (bridges, plumbing, electric lines, roads, sewage, etc.)

It doesn't make you a bad person to be taking advantage of bad policies. But cities do need to incentivize sustainable living over unsustainable suburban sprawl.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/but-rich-people...

I don't disagree. Simply price what it'll cost me to live in low density housing away from other people and I'm happy to pay. I will pay whatever it costs to not live in a dense urban core (to your points about environmental impact, we own two Teslas, have solar panels on the roof, have an electric lawnmower, and consume most of our power on site).

Sprawl is not unsustainable if you internalize the external costs, and I'll argue it'll get cheaper as mobility moves to electric vehicles and trucks, new infrastructure (with higher longevity) is built in new subdivisions instead of trying to replace 100+ year old gas, water, and sewer mains, etc.

@village-idiot: To your deleted comment, yes, my Teslas have a carbon impact during their manufacturing, but it is less than the SUV and pickup truck we used to own. It is very difficult to have no impact whatsoever on the Earth; optimize the best you can.

Buying suburban for me would replace my 30m walking commute for a 1.5h driving commute, all for a yard I wouldn't have time to use with my commute. Not a good trade for me.

I also don't have any kids and won't be having them.

How old are you? I was quite sure that I wouldn't have kids, either, but I randomly met a nice girl who lived in the (urban) apartment upstairs from me and next thing I knew, I was 38, married, and watching my son being born. It comes at you fast and unexpected and it wasn't at all the life-ruining thing that I was sure it was when I was 28. Here in my early 40s, my only regret is not doing it earlier.

Old enough and married long enough to make me changing my mind unlikely.

Fair points. My commute is 20 minutes (long enough for one NPR podcast and a Dunkin Dounts coffee on the way), and I only go into the office a few days each month. My employer even installed an EV charger for me!

That sounds about perfect for a driving commute.

FWIW, what works for you as a childless person is not super relevant to what works, in general. In the long term, earth will be filled mostly with people who have children.

Make that an anecdote of 4 - you, I, and 2 neighbors. Also, better school quality compared to the urban core.