I started to read this waiting for the punchline to a Dad joke. Kids can still mow lawns for sure.

>This stuff is being pushed from the top.

Is this some kind of Sparta thing? Like you all go up to the top of the mountain and someone pushes Dad off? Because if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works.

>It used to be a mark of shame not to have a large family

When and where was this? As someone who grew up Catholic it feels like that cut both ways.

To be vaguely serious for longer than I want, my wife and I just had a long, unfun conversation about how hard it is to deal with her mom's dementia and I don't know that we could do anywhere near as well with dealing with it if we didn't have a kid of our own. It's a shitty Ponzi schema, but the alternative is being Shakers.

Old calculus: "I need to have lots of children so they support me in my old age. No matter the cost."

New calculus: "Between retirement accounts and welfare, society will support me in my old age. Children are really, really expensive."

It's economics, plain and simple. Of course there's a "top" and the "top" does dictate the structure. If you doubt that, ask: what percent of your income do you pay in taxes, and what percent of his income does your CEO pay in taxes (assuming you work at a typical bigcorp)?

I'm not saying that "yolo all the way to carrying capacity -- and beyond!" would be a better policy, but it clearly used to be the policy and isn't anymore. Personally, I think we dodged a big bullet and took a little one. The "little" bullet is still going to hurt quite a bit, though.

This, but also people used to see having a family as being the meaning of their lives. In the modern world, the alternative meaning of life invention is the Career™. This alone, that people have been influenced to believe a career is a replacement for having a family, is highly suspect of "top-down" influence. We don't even have the perspective of how ridiculous career driven culture is.

This also causes people to move farther away from their families for both school and then work, often meaning that the grandparent support system is not available when you want to have kids.

That, in my opinion, is taken for granted more than anything else.

It also causes people to wait longer and longer to have children. My twins, my first children, came when I was 38 years old. My wife was 35. Most of our friends and family were also well into their 30s before having their first kid. This is not a winning strategy...

I think there's definitely something to this, and I'd agree that career driven culture is very toxic.

But I'd also hesitate to call it "top-down" influence. That would drastically downplay the autonomy we have in first-world countries. Nobody is forced to prioritize their career over everything else. In most countries, I'd say it's the complete opposite - tax incentives and benefits are usually structured to encourage child-rearing.

It's too easy for everyone to blame "the man" or "society" for a mindset that is entirely self-inflicted - with the exception of the US system tying healthcare to employment. That is definitely a top-down influence.

> It's too easy for everyone to blame "the man" or "society" for a mindset that is entirely self-inflicted - with the exception of the US system tying healthcare to employment. That is definitely a top-down influence.

The truth is that most "toxic culture" issues are systemic, so dumping blame on individuals for following systemic incentives doesn't make any sense.

Nobody is forced to prioritize their career, but a lot of people don't exactly have a choice to pursue leisure either. Lot's of people working paycheck to paycheck with no savings. How can you start a family in this country under those conditions?

> The truth is that most "toxic culture" issues are systemic, so dumping blame on individuals for following systemic incentives doesn't make any sense.

Aside from tying healthcare to employment in the USA, what systemic issues are there?

> Nobody is forced to prioritize their career, but a lot of people don't exactly have a choice to pursue leisure either. Lot's of people working paycheck to paycheck with no savings. How can you start a family in this country under those conditions?

Yet birthrates decrease with income - lower income households have higher birthrates [0]. This suggests that a lower fertility rate is indeed a choice, rather than economic necessity.

[0] - US statistics, but this is broadly the same across the world https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

systemic != top down for me.

top down to me equal some secret cabal of people that push an agenda

systemic to me means the way the system is but how the system got that way would be the random inputs of thousands or even millions of individual and uncoordinated actions.

People living paycheck to paycheck seems like it's always been a thing even when they had larger families. In fact the largest families in the modern world come from the people with the least amount of money (not judging, just stating what I've read). So having a paycheck looks like it has the opposite effect of encouraging family. No I'm not arguing that we should therefore get less pay. Just arguing against that idea that if everyone had a paycheck large enough to support a bigger family that they'd start having bigger families.

I would agree that not all systemic problems are top down, but many are, and there are "secret cabals" dedicated to creating and propagating such systems. It doesn't make sense to me to define systemic problems as strictly random, since humans attempt to create top-down, complex systems constantly (especially post-WW2 in more modern society).

> People living paycheck to paycheck seems like it's always been a thing even when they had larger families.

Different eras, different issues. In agrarian times a large family was an investment in future labor, and as a retirement/continuity strategy. In modern society, adding children is a significant expense, and with the easy availability of birth control, it's far more of a choice. In both cases, people were following the rational incentives that society has created for them.

We can argue about whether the current economic circumstances are random or top-down, but in either case, if you change the incentives for having kids (universal healthcare, affordable childcare, food/housing security, etc.) then you will get more kids.

Yeah, the two are connected, for sure.

Society can only support you in old age if there are enough younger people around. Unfortunately, even though kids are needed for society to function and keep going, not much of the cost of raising kids is socialized, at least in the states. Day care for one kid where I live is $1700/month and rising, you have to be rich to afford it.

It's important to note that in Germany, at least, day care is provided by the state at no cost, starting from the age of 3mo or so. You also get 300 euros a month per child. German society has made a concerted effort to encourage that people have children in Germany. It's an idea worth copying, IMHO.

That does sound easier, is there a higher birth rate in that area?

It has, but mostly from immigrants or poor families. Middle class families are still barely having one child or none at all.

"Society can only support you in old age if there are enough younger people around."

I do not agree with that. In my opinion, technology advancements (say, driverless cars) will make reduce the amount of young people needed to support for older people.

I have yet to see any technology that will change a bedpan in the next 30 years. Much less provide the most important component to an older person’s mental (and hence in some ways physical) health - which is the company of other humans, family and friends, and typically grand children and other decendants.

I have been thinking of some powered exoskeleton that provides mobility as one solution.

What is more concerning is loneliness, but maybe VR NPCs or something.

I don't think loneliness will be massive issue. Considering the population of young adults and adults already suffering from it. Nothing will be different for us. And the communications are likely to improve so this is one thing that technology can solve.

In that case, if these technologies become so successful to eliminate the need for young people, they will basically become our successor species and all this is moot anyways.

Obviously that won’t happen overnight, but it could definitely happen gradually.

If declining birth rate is a matter of what people can afford, we should look for some sort of correlation between wealth and birth rate.

To the best of my knowledge, the correlation is somewhat negative--that is, rich people have lower average birth rates than poor people.

How can it be economics "plain and simple" if even people who can easily afford to raise large families choose not to? Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan could afford more kids than the Duggars. But they have two.

For the same reason that the CEO of the fortune-500 I work at ran around with a broken phone screen for the better part of a year: things cost time and energy, not just money. Children even moreso. Being cash-rich doesn't make you rich in time and energy.

> New calculus: "Between retirement accounts and welfare, society will support me in my old age. Children are really, really expensive."

My calculus is not at all that society will support me. In fact, it’s the opposite. I anticipate no support from society, but I also don’t want to burden my family or society so I hope to be able to go out on my own terms once I am no longer self sufficient.

> Old calculus: "I need to have lots of children so they support me in my old age. No matter the cost."

You forget that old calculus also included "Eh it's barely worth learning their names until they're 5 years old".

In 1900 child mortality under 5 was 35%! In 1800 it was almost 40%. -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality#/media/File:Gl...

You needed 3 babies just to make 2 toddlers. Let alone adults.

Some people have extraordinary wealth and they have the ability to set economic incentives, policies, and cultural influences for certain types of behavior to emerge. There's a hierarchy to our societies, there are people with great power and people with little to no power. I guess the greatest magic trick of the modern world is to make people believe such things do not exist.

IMO a greater magic trick is convincing folks like you that these rich people are actually powerful enough to control fundamental behaviors like sex and reproduction.

It's a profoundly dis-empowering and anti-democratic message, which is of course why a lot of those rich people are happy for you to believe it.

The reality is this: in every instance we know of, making education and birth control available to women (not forcing, just giving them the option) has resulted in declining birth rates and increasing standards of living.

It's really quite inconvenient to be pregnant, to parent a newborn, and to be responsible for a child for 2+ decades. It's very rewarding, but it's also really hard. You don't need a global conspiracy to explain why many women limit or opt against it if given the chance.

Parenting is hard and expensive, especially these days in the developed world where people have children late and most people don’t live near extended family. My parents moving near me totally changed my wife and my outlook on having a third (from “no way, too sleepy” to “hey remember when the little one was just a baby?”)

Money is just one form of wealth. Having a network of trusted, productive people, such as healthy grandparents who can assist with raising children is another.

I can see in my extended family and friends the monetary and general success of those with supportive families (especially those families with multiple brothers) that worked together versus those families that were split apart and did not have someone to rely on. They are in completely different socioeconomic classes now.

Wouldn't rich people or powerful organizations be able to influence family planning decisions in exactly the way you just described?

Funding cheap ubiquitous birth control on a global scale.

If you want some chocolate ice cream, and I sell some to you, does that make me a powerful person who influenced your ice-cream-eating decisions?

Are you saying there are no mechanisms that allow wealthy people to influence human behavior on a large scale? Please read "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays.

France has tried. They even give subsidies. But the fertility rate is only 1.85.

The groups that are still growing are those that oppress women. Islamic countries [1] and ultra-orthodox Jews, especially. Evangelical Christians used to be higher but have now dropped down to the below-replacement US rate.

Teen pregnancies are way down in the US. So are abortions; that's not it.

Nobody really understands why. There's lots of speculation. The decline of religion? Better birth control? Video games? Declining testosterone levels? Fewer people in agriculture?

[1] Fertility rate 2.9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth

[2] Fertility rate 6.2. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/israeli-population-increase-...

[3] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2018/06/faith-fer...

There should be a godwins law for people who attempt to use this method of ending a discussion.

"go read this book which explains my point because I can't explain it well enough to others." is not a convincing argument in the least.

What good are books if we can't direct people at them? That book makes my case. The fact that Bernays was a major advisor for the media complex of America makes the book an even more significant piece of evidence for my position.

The idea is not that books are not useful, but that you should make effort to summarize the main point of the book while still recommending the book.

Ok...the main point is that there is a shadow government that shapes our culture and people's perceptions through mass media and by corrupting influential people for the purpose of endorsing certain ideas/products. In that work, Bernays details these types of "shadow governments."

You should see their blog. It quotes Nietszche and the Bene Gesserit on the way to thousands of words restating Wittgenstein's axioms.

The problem with your thesis is that it overlooks the centuries-long advancement of feminism in favour of a conspiracy theory.

It's funny how people dismiss things so readily by labeling them "conspiracy theory." I just can't imagine looking at a world with such great wealth inequality and coming to the conclusion that this is an equal playing field where everyone exerts the same influence on the evolution of humanity.

Mary Wollstonecraft was not rich, and (ironically given this discussion) died due to the complications of giving birth to Mary Shelley.

The claim that the wealthy are controlling everyone's fertility is as short-sighted as it is parochial.

Given that elsewhere in this thread you explain how this is all the work of a shadow government, the label hardly seems unwarranted.

They're controlling the economy in ways that influence reproductive choices.

Social progress influences choice, which in turn influences economies, which influence people.

There is no cabal of They. The "shadow government" thesis is straight-up conspiracy batshit.

Unless you mean the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China who certainly authorized the two-child law just a few years back, but they're not really a shadow government. They're a regular one, just not very transparent.

Ultimately both Chinese communism (via Hegel) and Western feminism (via Wollstonecraft) trace their origins back to the French Revolution, so maybe you are being controlled by Robespierre.

Either you have sufficient evidence or you don’t. This is what separates us from the schizos.

>Because if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works.

First, a top dictating human sexuality is hilarious to read out of context. Also somewhat accurate.

Anyway, I don't think they mean there is a concrete system designed to keep people from reproducing. It's more of a feedback loop where the richest people in the world get concerned about things like global warming, overpopulation, and whatever else risks their way of life and so they use their social capital to dictate ideas and ideals that protect them. They can do this with things like think tanks or social media influencers or whatever. It's not some highly organized psyop but it's effective because they have so much economic influence.

I think you're trying to very generously interpret a conspiracy theory that doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. Access to contraception, and a rise in women's education and employment, are not a message imposed on society by the wealthy, inadvertently or otherwise, nor have they occurred on the timeline of concerns such as climate change and resource exhaustion. They are social consequences of the Enlightenment.

Consider how attitudes towards contraception have changed over time. There was a time, not that long ago, where the separation of procreation from the procreative act was considered harmful to both society and the individual.

There is a cultural elite, who’s effect has been so profound, they have led you to believe that such a cultural norm as we enjoy today was inevitable and have convinced the world that taking a perfectly healthy reproductive system and making it dysfunctional is “healthcare”.

That was people disliking the change and being loud. And they failed to pose their will on those who found contraception useful for their own lives.

And they failed also because non stigmatized contraception lowers teenage pregnancies and make aids spread less. Meaning it actually solves societal problems.

Inability to control pregnancy means less heath, particularly for women and small children.

Contraception is not dysfunction.

There is no cultural elite brainwashing me into believe otherwise. I can arrive at this position all on my lonesome, simply by rejecting the appalling prejudices of the Catholic church (and many other religions), misogynists in general, and bigoted authoritarians (but I repeat myself); both on the basis of the crushing harm they have inflicted over the centuries, and the colossal waste of talent due to the systematic oppression of women.

As for this:

> the separation of procreation from the procreative act was considered harmful to both society and the individual

That depends who you read. If your selectively chosen history of the last 6,000 years consists entirely of texts written by and/or documenting the fun police, I can see how you might arrive at this conclusion. On the other hand, there have always been voices otherwise. Until the Enlightenment they tended to be pilloried and/or executed, but that doesn't exactly highlight the hypocrisy in charge as something to be desired, rather something to be abandoned.

Again, unless you are amongst them.

How’s the water?

I don't mention water.

edit: poking around, this seems to be some reference to an American college commencement speech. I'm not an American, so I didn't get the cultural allusion, sorry.

Point of fact, I don't swim in your water at all. Any assumptions you may choose to make about the cultural perspective, skin colour, second language, religious tradition(s), countr(ies) of birth/residence/affiliation/upbringing, nationality of parents and/or in-laws, immigration status, education, newspaper subscriptions, food and musical preferences, or political leanings influencing my worldview are likely flat wrong.

Contraception is not dysfunction, and this is neither a parochial, nor (what-americans-call-"liberal") liberal assertion.

> if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works.

Access to birth control and abortion, social services and welfare, trends in divorce and family court ... All of these things are top-down forces that create a tapestry heavily influencing human sexuality and the choices men and women make. One only has to look at how different things were 50 or so (or less) years ago before these things were as widespread.

Premodern society where women were effectively property, where religion dictated their role, where marriage and a woman staying at home were the social norm. You're trying to pretend like social policy is a new thing when the Catholic Church has been controlling the rights of individuals for a very long time. To such an extent that Kings were generally subservient to the Pope. And then those Kings and Queens did actions like the Inquisition where they forced individuals to either convert to Catholicism, be exiled, or be murdered.

History goes through many stages of social belief intertwined with social control. In ancient Rome there was a plant that caused abortions and was so popular it went extinct [1]. However also in ancient Rome, Augustus patronized writers like Virgil to help instil "traditional family values" in the Roman population.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

“Premodern?” The US fertility rate fell from 3.65 in 1960 to below replacement in 1972. In that time, the labor force participation rate of married women went from 32% to 42%. Then it’s been pretty stable since then between 1.8-2.1, even as the labor force participation rate for married women went from 42% to 67%. We are talking about much more recent social trends at issue.

Perhaps the "premodern societies" that are emphasized in educational settings had those qualities. Maybe that says more about our educational values than about premodern societies. Many ancient people didn't emphasize property in the first place. Many others were more matriarchal than patriarchal. Sure, Catholicism was fairly irredeemable...

I did my time in the Catholic church. There were some weird moments, but I got a lot luckier than a lot of other kids (and women, indigenous, etc.) Now I get to say my truth. Actually, anyone who reads history can say it too.

What suggests these are targeted "top down" forces and not just a natural progression of society and technology?

While I don't really believe in a 'conspiracy' - I can easily see "targeted 'top down' forces" in the reverse direction...Limiting women's access birth control, abortion, etc. Hell - just getting your tubes tied can be 10x harder then getting a vasectomy.

If societal forces can be so effective in limiting women's choices/options, is hard to believe they could have had a hand in expanding them as well?

Why can't it be both?

> One only has to look at how different things were 50 or so (or less) years ago before these things were as widespread.

Was the average person happier under these circumstances? That's what should be optimized not keeping things the same for the sake of it

I wasn't making a normative statement. You can form your own opinion on what you prefer

Yes... other comment, see this one please.

I have a 2 year old. It was an accident as both I and my wife didn’t want children or weren’t ready. I’ve got to say that it has become the best part of my life and yes it is not easy when you’re looking in from the outside but becoming a parent changes you, you become more resilient, objevtives in life change, etc So, no, children are not a burden unless you make it to be.

It’s wonderful that it’s worked out for you, but I can show you to Facebook support groups of thousands of parents that abhor and regret having children. Children by their very nature are a burden because they can’t care for themselves.

Are we arguing with the very data from this article? Clearly children are not that in demand if the fertility rate is experiencing a “jaw dropping global crash”.

children have been a cornerstone of human life from the start, but you think the outliers on facebook are the norm?

everything the commenter described are not things one would “demand” before having children, but would only experience after having them. honestly, referring to having children as something that would be “in demand” is disgusting to me

Yes, children "in demand" sounds like they are some kind of marketable product, it does sound a bit misguided. But I don't blame people who don't want to have children, when we are pressured to produce and be as productive as possible, to be the best versions of ourselves, to be always strive to have more and be ever more end always self improve, the place of parenting in one's life has diminished quite a bit. I am glad I did become a parent and in a way I am out of that rat race as my perspective, my goals, my wants, everything has changed and I think for the better.

America has had tons of immigrants working 24/7 to run a restaurant, a laundry shop, or a drugstore, while putting their kids through school. Most of them weren't forced to come to America or choose such a job: they did it because even maintaining a 24-hour convenience store is less grueling work than planting rice, and they're rejecting their children's "help" because they want their children to study and have even better, more comfortable jobs.

Pre-modern agricultural societies had huge families because there was so much work that you could always use an extra pair of hands. (Also, many of them died off anyway so you had to factor that in.) You are looking at the past with a seriously rose-tinted lens.

Child mortality was huge, fixing that definitely provided a reason to put a break to the child bearing machine. There are still poor parts of the world where that is still the norm but it’s dwindling fast

I never said the past was a utopia...I was commenting on the modern disincentives for having children.

It also just costs more to do basic things. Buying a house, finding an apartment, college, finding a job (more competitive), there’s trends of more loneliness and lack of community, you have to learn graphql now, it doesn’t end, and so by the time you find yourself stable in all these things you’re much older, and well, worn out.

Starting a family used to be the first thing you did, but now it’s more of the capstone that one could easily not burden themselves with after all of life’s bullshit.

We are psychologically and financially exhausting a generation.

Also not sure why you are downvoted. As a 33 year old working professional who jumped through life's bullshit tip finally start a family, this resonates.

Not sure why you're downvoted. Your point strikes me as worthy of consideration

Because the truth is painful. People don't want to believe things are bad. People will fight tooth and nail to hold onto their perception that we are living in some sort of utopia and that everything is sunshine and rainbows.

I don't blame people that want to look the other way...it's not a pleasant sight.

It's sure ain't easy but if you take a look at the history of mankind it sure is paradise. War and famine have has been the standard, things we complain about are totally different now.

It isn't just the choices. Young people are having less sex. Japan has noticed this. Declining sales of contraceptives but declines in both STDs and pregnancies, especially amongst the young. Incidents of the "oops we are pregnant" scenario have declined all over the western world. Western culture has for decades complained that young people have too liberal a view of sex. Remember those abstinence pushes in the 80s and 90s? Remember purity rings? They worked.

I'm pretty skeptical that abstinence pushes and purity rings worked. I'm pretty sure that the slack was picked up by widely available pornography.

I attribute this to anti-social tendencies rising due to technology addiction. People are getting worse at social interaction. When you spend so much time in front of a screen, it has to have some effect on your ability to socialize.

That's my take anyway.

I think you've found a confounding variable. The root cause here is that people are entertained by something that pushes their buttons. What you've said makes it sound like people want to socialise but are hampered. I would argue that people are not that hampered but rather choose not to socialise in a way which leads to dating (or community engagement)

The main retort to this is, what about all those people who have a gnawing pain of loneliness. Well, with fewer people that pressed to find a partner, local community engagement is down. This forces dating online which results in people screening, judging and not taking chances, leading to a low success rate. This is not a consequence of a lack of social skills. When people engage in person, there are multiple interactions that occur which are not judgemental (in dating terms), leading to more opportunities for people to see the interesting bits in others.

> Remember purity rings? They worked.

Yeah... I'm not so sure about that. My bet would be on easy access to porn, entertainment, and social media resulting in less in person social interaction.

Pushed from the top? What on earth? Guy, there's no conspiracy required to explain urbanization. It is a simple matter of better agriculture tech. We just don't need much labor on farms anymore.

It's absolutely pushed from the top. Nobody outside of extreme religious communities sees increasing the population as a noble goal.

At least in the US, children are effectively a tax on the working class. How many people do you know that had to keep working to put their kids through college? Why do workplaces have tax-incentivized college savings accounts? Why does it cost employees to add children to employer-sponsored health insurance?

The system is very much set up to disincentive having kids. If you do have them, the trade is that you will always be financially drained. Somewhere between 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Very few will ever acquire equity in anything.

The American Dream is now working until you're 70, supporting 2 kids through college, building equity in your house, then reverse-mortgaging your property to hopefully cover your final years.

You could argue that it's an organic evolution of our profit-driven system, but that system only exists because it's what the owner-class is pushing.

Either we should accept that having children is a hobby for the rich and find other meaningful ways to live our lives, or we should have radical changes in society to increase family sizes.

This article is about global birth rates falling, which is true. But your comment is about conditions specific to the US. Yet birth rates are falling in countries which don't have the warped incentives you point out in the states, and where having children is supported (see Europe, much of Asia, etc.). So although you accurately point out that there are downsides, if not disincentives, to having kids in the US, that cannot be the driving cause of falling birth rates in the rest of the world. And therefore there's no indication of any kind of "top-down" force there either.

> having children is supported (see Europe...

I politely disagree, the childcare support and social services you have in Europe are not an incentive in anyway, for the large majority of countries here, they are a mitigation at best.

The majority of young europeans in fertile age, continue to struggle with housing costs (high rents high down payments) and salaries not in line with COL until far too late in their careers, if not indefinitely. Those two are the major drivers for 'post-poning' having children in IMHO.

"Europe" is a big and diverse place. But it's my fault for generalizing. Let me rather mention the Scandinavian countries, for example, where support is pretty ample. Certainly, having kids is still expensive and time consuming, but that's how it's been since the beginning of time. The difference is, now people can afford not to have them.

As for the rest of Europe, sure, housing is expensive and all that, but people have more discretionary income now than ever, after housing and daily necessities (at least as far as I can recall from economics classes). But I do think young people's expectations have shifted as well, which makes it feel like we've got less headroom for a bunch of kids. And we certainly don't have the safe, well-paying jobs our boomer parents often lucked into.

Here's a top down global conspiracy theory: micro plastics carried by the air and water are ingested and cause hormone disruption leading to less sex and therefore less children.

Why attribute to malice that which is equally well explained by incompetence? or in this case, greed?

This is just not true.

Birthrate declines as a society becomes more prosperous and women gain control over their reproductive rights.

In fact, the correlation is the opposite of what you said; wealthier people have fewer kids than poor people in almost every country. Your suggestion that people decide not to have kids because they can't afford them is not supported by the data; those who can most afford the kids have the fewest.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

I wish they'd show all the brackets above 200k in income. I would guess that after maybe 500k in income, it probably trends back up.

> Most billionaires have three or more children, the GoCompare analysis found. Among them, 5% had no children, 9% had one child, 23% had two children, 25% had three children, 17% had four children and 21% had five or more. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos has four children, and Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of the luxury goods empire LVMH, has five. [1]

So if you're a billionaire, you're having lots of kids, but if you're making 200k/yr you're having fewer kids. It makes sense to me.

[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/weird-things-top-billionaires...

Billionaires are such a tiny sample size, though. Not sure how much you can draw from that data.

Children inherently cost money. Someone has to pay it. You're trying to pretend like the system is designed to screw parents by burdening them with this cost source that is a child when simply put, children cost money.

> How many people do you know that had to keep working to put their kids through college?

College costs money. The incentives with government backed student debt has inflated that cost dramatically. This wasn't some scheme to tax parents. It was a moral hazard of a bad policy intended to make college accessible but in turn caused massive tuition inflation.

> Why does it cost employees to add children to employer-sponsored health insurance?

Again, because insuring more people costs more money. Whether you're adding a child or a spouse, more insurance coverage ought to equate to higher premiums. That the economics of how insurance works. Again if there are higher costs, someone has to pay them.

> The system is very much set up to disincentive having kids.

The system does disincentive having kids but that doesn't at all imply the system was intentionally designed to do so. (A) kids cost money and that is by definition a disincentive and (B) some policies like college loans were not setup to cause this disincentive. They instead just had adverse effects due to the moral hazard of incentivizing colleges to raise tuition since the government will back the loan and the student doesn't understand how to make an informed decision on cost tradeoffs at their age. But this isn't the system being designed to prevent people from having children.

I used to believe your line of reasoning, but I don't anymore.

> It was a moral hazard of a bad policy intended to make college accessible but in turn caused massive tuition inflation.

Do you really think that's unsolvable? That "bad policy" is corruption. That tuition inflation could be capped.

> Again if there are higher costs, someone has to pay them.

You would think we would all want to educate, insure, and support the next generation. Maybe some costs should be shared?

> They instead just had adverse effects due to the moral hazard of incentivizing colleges to raise tuition since the government will back the loan and the student doesn't understand how to make an informed decision on cost tradeoffs at their age. But this isn't the system being designed to prevent people from having children.

I know you're saying this unironically, but please consider that a system which allows an 18 year old to sign up to accrue tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of debt over 4+ years with no guarantee that they will be able to pay it back... well, maybe that's just not a system we should have built. You know who would love to build that system? Probably the recipients of the 18 year old's borrowed funds.

I have friends that are engineers in various fields, college educated, career people, and they're still struggling to save much of anything after childcare expenses and paying down their college debts.

It's no problem though, they just have to keep working and it's all fine. Unless they can't work for some reason, then they've got a big problem.

For your struggling friends, I found the problem:

"career people, and they're still struggling to save much of anything after childcare expenses"

That just isn't going to work. It can't. By law in most places, the ratio of childcare workers to children is limited. The work simply doesn't scale. Suppose the ratio is 1:4, and there is a 100% markup on the wages to pay for stuff like the building. Sending 4 kids will thus cost the pay of two workers. Dividing down, just 2 kids will cost as much as the typical parent might earn.

There’s no shortage of media and news out there talking about the joys of being child free in your 40s, how much more fulfilling a good career and vacations are than being burdened with children who’ll impede promotions and take up your free time, how having kids is the worst possible thing for the environment and so on.

It’s also education and contraception that have a role. I’d also add the high cost of living too as well as rising inequality.

Nonsense.

Anecdotally: I've had multiple discussions with employed, unburdened men and women (particularly women) in their mid 20s who have decided not to have children for one reason: Climate change.

The planet is collapsing. Our children are likely to die of hunger, disease, or warfare as things become more destabilized over the next 50 years.

We don't believe their lives will be better than ours, and we don't want to further deplete humanity's scant resources.

From this perspective, having children is selfish.

Climate change will either destroy the planet, or some team of scientists and engineers will avert disaster by inventing carbon capture or whatever. It is highly likely those scientists will have been born and raised in a well educated middle class family somewhere in the developed world.

I too have heard this from people. But when I do, I can't tell if it is the root cause or a rationalization. There is still intense social pressure to have children, although I certainly remember it dropping over the last 25 years. Having children is still the assumption for a heterosexual couple, and you are often expected to provide a rationale for why not, and you feel you will be perceived negatively if the rationale is seen as selfish, and people who do choose to have children still sometimes take your choices as a criticism about their life choices. So you come up with some banal reason to deflect the conversation you have had too many times already. Or a reason to justify the decision to yourself, because social pressures are telling you it is a selfish decision and that selfish decisions about your own life are somehow bad.

People with different views are on an exponential growth trajectory, so good luck with that.

That’s a bizarre and mean-spirited line of thinking. There’s nothing inherently selfish about not having kids. Every life decision involves trade-offs between time, money, effort, and various kinds of joys and sorrows. People have lots of different circumstances that lead them to evaluate these trade-offs differently. Children are a huge, irreversible decision. It’s natural for people to be cautious. Besides, one could easily argue that having kids is selfish - you’re deliberately consuming more resources and tax dollars so you can create clones of yourself and expand your family line. That’s not a nice or realistic way to look at having children though.

I am sorry you find my wife and I's decision selfish, sad, and misguided. You needn't think about it, really, as our decision doesn't concern you in the slightest.

It may help you to travel. Some time in other continents made us realize -- we have plenty of people already. The planet will do just fine without one or three more from us.

I personally don't and don't judge you either. As I said earlier, I and my wife didn't want children until one came along; that eventually has changed us. But we will stop at one and I agree that there are plenty of people already.

You could also have another perspective: The people who bring children into this world, without the future child's consent are being selfish because _they_ want that child. You can never know if that person will grow up to have a miserable life.

I know many would consider it a ridiculous argument but I find your label of selfishness similar.

You shouldn't assume the worst of your fellows. Life is complicated and there are valid reasons beyond selfishness for people to not want children.

There are no valid or invalid reasons, it's nobody else's business really.

Perhaps there's some truth to what you say if we consider couples who choose not to have kids at all. However, I think the cases that choose to have just one or two children are more common than those who choose not to have kids at all. I think financial situation better explains why people would stop at one kid rather than 3.

Right: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FT_15.... The vast majority of women (90% in 1976, 86% in 2013) have at least one child. But the lifetime number of births has fallen from 3.1 in 1976 to 2.1 in 2013. This reflects changes in the perceived optimal family size: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FT_15...

I would’t say that is the main reason but that is one of them, sure. Also the society has become a lot more isolated. I sometimes look at a modern societies like Japan or South Korea and am wondering whether the western world will follow suit.

You're getting downvoted but I think there is some truth to this statement.

It's two statements. 1) childlessness is a selfish choice. 2) this is sad and misguided. That second statement, without evidence or argument, is arrogant and patronizing. Non-inclusive even.

What would natural even look like in this context?

It was only in the recent history that it was the expectation that your child would live and go on to have greater than replacement number of children. That is evident by the fact that for most of our species history the total population was fairly static.

Pulling nitrogen out of the air and sprinkling it on domestic crops was real "unnatural" but it got us past ~3B

> Children have become more of a burden than a benefit in many ways.

Especially if you are female. Children turn your very nice life into a completely different one and take up an enormous amount of resource.

I would even go a step further that in certain cultures simply getting married turns your life from a very nice thing into something destined for drudgery. Japan is a primary example as the woman is expected to take care of both sets of parents in their old age.

Do you love some man enough to take that on? Or are you better off having sex occasionally and skipping the marriage thing?

> I don't think these changes are natural, given how little control people have over their lives. This stuff is being pushed from the top.

No need. People aren't stupid and can see the consequences of their actions.

Lack of elder care support is probably becoming more crucial than lack of child care support. Children start with their needs at infinity and get more independent on a strict time schedule--elderly get more dependent on an indefinite schedule and their needs go to infinity right before they pass.

Though there's some truthiness here, it's a very cynical take.

Most people aren't thinking about the ROI of their kids, that ironically is a pretty modern twist.

Birth Control is way, overwhelmingly the #1 issue, so far ahead of anything else. Condoms and 'the pill' are a very new phenom. Imagine before them, when every sexual act had a pretty high change of pregnancy. And then it's easy to understand how sex<->marriage<->family are so deeply intertwined in pretty much everywhere. 'Sexually active' basically guarantees children, children need stability, so it's 'nuclear family' or bust for the most part, before the pill. An enormous amount of social conditioning is baked into this.

'Working for corporations' is better than 'working in a factory, mine, or on land you don't own' ie serfdom, which would have been the default for most of our ancestors in one way or another.

Undoubtedly, the 'thing we cannot say in public' is that double-working families has had a double effect on the family 1) less time and 2) more acerbically - the cost of living goes up, particularly for property, forcing everyone else into the same 'two workers or risk being be poor' trap.

Playing with the reproductive system (I mean social system, not so much physicality), is really, really dangerous, as I don't think our individual intentions are all that positive - but the silver lining is that the world does have quite a bit of people, and that in many places, we do need to have less kids.

Remember we're living a lot longer now as well.

So at least for the moment, if India and Nigeria can get a grip on fertility ... it has upsides.

The real challenge, and scary things is what this will mean longer term. Once Japan drops to a certain point, will they level out? Or expire?

Hopefully we can work it out.

Birth control is not the overwhelming #1 issue other than at the tail end. TFR plummeted continually from from 1800 to 1920 (from 7 to 3) in the US (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-u...).

The primary issues were first increased probability of survival to adulthood (shift focus to raising fewer kids better) and then higher opportunity cost (especially for women who gained opportunities).

If your assumption that people are having less children because of a shift of the sense of responsibility in the modern era--then the counter-narrative could then be built that the birthrate could potentially rebound in a future where automation has replaced workers and people's sense of purpose is no longer a product of career motivations.

If by “from the top” you mean women entering the workforce, perhaps. But to me that didn’t seem dictated by anyone.

We should take a page from Jonathan Swift and consider eating them.

Counterpoint; quand les pauvres n'auront plus rien à manger, ils mangeront les riches.

Indeed.

Capitalists want to increase their wealth. They have a well defined role in society. Our government is supposed to be a counterbalance to them...but the two have become intertwined, hence the problem.

In my view, the will of the people is not being reflected in the government due to corruption.

Agenda from the top? Birth control played no role even though it let individuals decide on fertility?

You're refusing to try because you might lose. This is taking a loss by default. It's like a sports team refusing to go onto the field. It counts as a loss.

I have never felt this world was a place to bring children. And I am not alone. I rarely mention my feelings because it runs contrary to most people's stated views. Yet, any time I bring it up I get a minority sharing strong agreement. I'm 55, and I've asked my entire life the question "how can people bring children into this?" My childhood was no more unusual than the typical American Midwest dysfunction, too.

> Children have become more of a burden than a benefit in many ways.

If you view the purpose of your life through a purely hedonist lens, sure. If you view the purpose of your life as being a member of an unbroken chain going back to the very first living cell, with an incredible legacy to uphold and protect, the burden is really just a masked joy.