A lot of liberal (in the classical, broad sense) young folks simply shrug their shoulders at this fact -- not everyone wants kids, so what?

I think it's worth considering, if you're one of these people, that without children being born to liberal parents, the "extremists" of the world -- fundamentalist muslims, christians, and so on -- will inherit the earth. Of course some of their children will grow up to be liberals, but that number will inevitably decrease as the total number of liberals does as well.

If you believe that equality, feminism, human rights, and so on would suffer in that world, then I think you should consider if not having kids is really a big deal after all.

...so then they inherit the earth?

I wonder if this sort of thing is cyclical. The next dark age, caused by the earth being overrun by the fecund and illiberal peoples of the world until they can only eat themselves. Maybe a plague wipes them all out and they are too poor/illiterate/unlucky to survive it. 600 years later, someone re-invents the internet, for people to use to post that they don't want kids.

I don't think "let's make some babies to keep those extremists at bay" is the sexiest of pillow talk. But then again, I have dated individuals with severe enough views on the world where I could see that actually working. :)

My lifespan is too short to worry overmuch about any of it.

Haha, yeah it does fall apart on the individual level. I don't think I would convince my girlfriend to have kids by talking dirty with population statistics ;)

And for the record I'm just another childless, un-married late-twenties tech guy that wants to travel and hang out with my friends on the weekend. So I'm definitely part of the "problem" not the solution.

I just mean to say -- we've inherited a really rich intellectual tradition that has borrowed from thinkers around the world, and really we are torchbearers for that way of life. It's not a guarantee that progress will march forever onward. So we need to think about how to keep our societies going in a way that still produces families.

Maybe that means the government steps in and says that every workplace has to have a day care center. It seemed to work for Patagonia. Maybe it means we start some crazy scheme where companies hire married couples as a package deal. Maybe it means we have to rebuild our cities to have denser neighborhoods with lots of families clustered together. Maybe we all have to start living in hippie communes. I have no idea.

I don't want society to go backwards, but I don't want our values to die out either. So it's clear that we need radical change.

>Of course some of their children will grow up to be liberals, but that number will inevitably decrease as the total number of liberals does as well.

This is particularly true because political views are to some degree heritable. And it's not just a hypothetical thing: many conservatives believe they can "win" if they just manage to have children and hold out for a few decades as the liberals slowly breed themselves out of existence.

I agree, it's not surprising given birth control and economic pressures to join the workforce, but it is new and distinctly modern, and writing it off as "some people just don't want kids" isn't a satisfactory explanation.

Something is deeply wrong in a society if it has all of the social safety net tools, like Finland does, to ease the burdens of childbearing and people still choose to not do it. It's a society in a slow, generations long suicide.

The future looks bleak for humans. It might not be in fact but it looks that way. Climate change and “AI” disruption or worse…it takes a special individual to want to bring a person into these situations.

People do, I did, but it’s not easy.

The future always looks bleak for humans, which is just part of the human experience. But today, we have the most material and technological abundance in history and people gesture vaguely at a long term time horizon problem and think "it's over". It was "over" during the Great Depression, and it was over before that during Spanish Flu. And before that during the Thirty Years War and the Black Death, and so on back to the Great Floods of mythology. Luckily, they didn't give up.

If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth, then doesn't it seem rational?

Like imagine a meteor was going to destroy the Earth in a year - would it make sense to have children? 10 years? 100?

>If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth

This sort of absurd hyperbole is a good sign you've been propagandized into believing something for the benefit of others.

Fast is a pretty relative term when it comes to geological and even civilizational time, so I don't know how absurd the hyperbole is, but I would say that I harbor deep sorrow for the children born within the last few years.

I don't know who it benefits if I believe that making significant alterations to the carbon content of the atmosphere of the Earth will have significant consequences (I don't feel much benefit from believing it; I wish I didn't), but I do see parties who stand to gain by denying it. I'd also love to believe in god and that there is meaning to any of this, but that does not mean that it is so.

Already where I live (South Texas) I can feel the effects - I've lived long enough to see the summers go from hot to dangerous, and the droughts become more severe; my co-worker's well literally ran dry a few weeks ago and he is far from alone. Running out of water will focus one on what is important.

I take zero joy in it, but the more I learn, the more I understand that humanity is living on borrowed time (not that different from an individual human I suppose), and we should try and enjoy the time that is left.

I agree with you. Now that women are not required to have children due to cultural or economic reasons, many choose not to. I don't see why many politicians think that is surprising.

There are too many demands in modern societies. Ironically, a kid may actually require even more work now than in the past. In the past the kids were less dependent on their parents. Now they need to be followed up closely at school and activities outside of school as well. I don't have children myself but I hear others have a full schedule at home where they spend a huge amount of their time helping with homework, driving the kids to activities or working for their local soccer club.

The parents basically end up as as almost full time managers of their children's careers. Not everyone wants that.

The only way we can change this is to make sure that it is possible to have kids, career and enough free personal time. I don't know if it is possible to do that without the government spending lots of money on these initiatives.

I had kids relatively late in life (42) and it's been amazing. I love being a dad, far more than I thought I would. It wasn't really about wanting kids or not wanting kids, it felt more like...puberty in that for most of human history you don't really get to choose to do it or not, it happens pretty naturally. I guess that's unfashionable to say. Perhaps some would say it's irresponsible. But the opening montage in Idiocracy looms large, I believe thinking too much about kids is a trap. Basically you should have them if you can.

Yes, it's hard work, and I was very happy to change my last diaper. But the rewards far, far outweigh the costs. Children are on balance a true joy, their laughter and smiles so pure and wonderful, that I can't imagine life without them.

This is good except for two things: (1) women lose their fertility at "a certain age" and if they put off childbearing for too long they might lose the opportunity and (2) if you have children late your life will overlap less with them. For that matter there is the issue of chasing a toddler around when you are 50 and less energetic than when you are 30.

It's probably not so good to have children when you are very young and not so good to have them when you are old, there is some optimum in between but unfortunately many people who put this off find the choice is made for them.

Luckily mom was 10 years younger than me. And yeah I have some concerns about being "the old dad" but I'm not that old and at least right now I'm pretty active. Had to start using reading glasses last year, so I know that won't last. But it will last long enough.

Stay fit, I’ve had 60-70 year olds ride last me in XC MTB races when I was in my 30s haha

> I believe thinking too much about kids is a trap. Basically you should have them if you can.

I cannot think of worse advice.

Congratulations to you that you found a life that works for you.

But the idea that people should just stop thinking and start procreating is absurd. Kids are a gigantic decision, the biggest one a person will ever make in their life. To not carefully consider that decision is utterly irresponsible, and to tell people to thoughtlessly have children without considering those consequences is equally so.

Poster did not say to “stop thinking” entirely but to avoid over thinking / over rationalizing about the reasons not to have kids.

You are on a tear in this thread, you may want to get some fresh air

Having kids was, effectively, not really a decision until the mid-20th century.

Would you say that all of your ancestors, prior to your parents, were utterly irresponsible?

I don't think people really know what "the consequences" are. There's a lot of flak in the zeitgeist about how awful, expensive, and horrific kids are - but precious little about how wonderful it is. It's false advertising! There is nothing you do with your evening that is better than mine reading bedtime stories to my kids. And your morning cannot be better than mine waking up to the smiles and laughter of my kids, ready to play.

I ponder this question myself on the edge of Gen Z and my life is simplified tremendously if I just essentially pause it in high earning young person mode.

Money is abundant for travel and anything I want. I don't need to figure out dating. Means I don't need to figure out everything from conflict resolution to clothing. I don't need to struggle to buy a ton of housing. I have friends/a sister who will have kids I can just play rich uncle to. I can retire decades early due to overemployment and spend an absurd amount of money every year doing whatever I want.

The Peter Pan life has a lot going for it. I am in my mid 20s and my life can essentially be on coast with a ton of fun for the rest of my life.

It's strange that other people will pay the burden of raising children that support your retirement.

You might think that your earning and savings supports your retirement, but no. It will be the next generation of workers that actualize it. Money is just unit of account, it by itself does not give you a retirement. Only working age, working people.

We've found ourselves in a very strange moral hazard. You spend your money to raise kids that will work to earn my savings in my retirement. Hopefully the state can afford your retirement too, but that's unlikely, because no one had children. Because this society sterilizes itself.

Seems like old age social safety nets are a net negative.

You'll feel different when you are old.

Developed countries will always have immigration as long as somewhere remains a totalitarian hole. But yes, economically there is significant moral hazard. It is dependent on somewhere being unpleasant enough for people to want to live in a completely different culture.

Immigrants are carrying the child rearing burden

>The Peter Pan life has a lot going for it.

Trust me, this feeling passes. You want to be prepared for when it does.

neverland doesn’t have a need for geriatric medicine.

you can have a ton of fun for a large portion of the rest of your life, and hopefully something happens such that later life care won’t be a concern. robot caretakers, clinical immortality, or otherwise.

this isn’t judgement, that may be the safer gamble. but it is a gamble.

Many people feel this way in their mid 20s, it often changes when you hit your early to mid 30s.

Most of us don't believe that it'll happen to us either. :)

Maybe, but between dating skills and allocation of spend I may otherwise be committed to the strategy whether I regret it or not.

A skill is something that you can train! We've all been there...

A lot of it is explained by rising marriage ages. Women lose the ability to have children at around 40, so the later they get married, the less chance they have of having children, even if all other things are equal. E.g. if we assume an even chance of having children per year, then we'd expect an increase of the average marriage age from 32 to 36 to halve the birth rate (as in the former there are 8 years in which the woman could give birth, while in the latter there are only 4).

This means that even if people's biological fertility and desire to have children didn't change at all, people delaying marriage to later in life would still potentially result in a big drop in the number of children born.

This is a good point. The average age of menopause in the US is, however, 51, not 40. That does not undermine your argument in principle, though.

Probably, a woman's chance of getting pregnant decreases the older she is, even if she is still menstruating. That would complicate the numbers but would not contradict your argument.

This is why a province in China is offering a cash bonus to couples who marry before the woman is 25.

It's true, and fair enough.

It is also true that societies are brutally darwinian. The ones that prevail are the ones that can produce the most offspring, and bring it to economic maturity.

This is the story behind the enormous success of China and India, per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. They are still nuclear superpowers with lunar missions. It doesn't matter if they are illiberal, there are more of them.

It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies.

But then I suppose, the burden of childcare should be better socialized. It used to rely more on grandparents, who would live nearby and be a good 10-20 years younger than nowadays.

But then again, you're saying, where that is in place people still don't want to have children. So maybe that doesn't work either.

Having a huge population is extremely beneficial for leaders and for the so-called elite that profit from the pyramidal effect.

But at the average individual level, I am not so sure.

You need a large population to support big industries and it helps tech innovation as well.

Taiwan population is not that large (23M), and yet they can support a pretty convincing semiconductor industry.

I agree that we need a reasonable amount of people to build and maintain large projects, millions, not billions.

They sell to a much larger population. If they could only sell to themselves they wouldn't have built such a large industry.

If there are a lot of working people when you retire it is easy to pay for your retirement, both in the sense that they can pay taxes and in the sense that the growing economy makes the stock market grow up which makes private defined benefit or defined contribution plans work better. Billionaires benefit from it even more than you but you do benefit from it.

You realize China is having its own demographic crash, yeah? And India's birth rate is at or below replacement?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

Bluntly, whether you meant to or not, this comment is full of coded bigotry. It invokes images of a foreign hoard, bang at the walls of the west, threatening to dilute or destroy "our" way of life.

1. The comment you're replying to explicitly acknowledges this fact in an aside.

2. It is not full of "coded bigotry." These are simple fact that almost everyone agrees on. India has explicitly made it a goal to reduce their fertility rate over the past few decades because of the problems of overpopulation. China's economy absolutely benefits from a high population. And yet I doubt you would characterize their humans rights record as stellar. It does not mean that Indians or Chinese people are in any way inferior to Westerners. And I highly doubt that the OP would agree with that either.

3. Even if it was, that isn't a critique of the comment's argument. It just means you find it distasteful. So what?

> Even if it was, that isn't a critique of the comment's argument.

Yes, it is.

The core of their comment is "oh noes western values will be lost!" (Or as they put it: "the global West has values worth preserving for the future").

My point is, no, they won't, because fertility is dropping everywhere. We're not that special. And that this purported fear is simply rooted in age-old racist tropes of a loss of cultural identity to scary foreigners, nothing more.

You're drawing connections, but you're not making concrete arguments.

Perhaps China and the West will both face population collapse. The argument still stands that Western values (and Chinese values) will be lost.

But humanity won't just vanish in a puff of smoke. It just means that societies that do not share "our" values will live on.

Do you believe in human rights? Feminism? Racial equality? Well too bad, because, at the current going rate, very few people in the 22nd century will.

> full of coded bigotry

Baloney. The comment might rely on some outdated information, or if you want to be uncharitable, outdated stereotypes, but that isn't bigotry. There's no need to moralize.

> per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor.

This is a line of reasoning I don't get. I mean I understand it, I just strongly disagree.

Countries are made up of people, individual people. How important is it really that a country is a "superpower" if the average person eeks out a horrible existence. To take it to a further extreme, look at the Russian empire of the late 18th/early 19th century. Russia was definitely a Great Power at that time, while also the majority of the population were slaves (there really wasn't much of a difference between serfdom and slavery) who were borderline starving, or actually starving, during that time. But rah rah Russia definitely got some nice palaces out of it at the time that certainly make great monuments today.

I'm much prefer to live in a "non-superpower" with a much better quality of life for me and the people I love.

Yeah, true. But I think the argument holds also for this utility function.

There is something about your society that you like, else you would be somewhere else. And, bluntly, if your society doesn't make babies, today, then in 20-30 years time there won't be people brought up in this culture. Either your society will go into decline for lack of said people, or will rely on immigration (assuming it's attractive to expats), eg people with different values to your society's.

It's not saying one society is better than another, only that if you think there is something good about your society (liberal rights? nukes? hell, maybe you're North Korean and like dictators!) then it takes babies to sustain it.

The default is you will get people brought up with values of most populous societies, which may or may not align with yours.

> It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies.

As someone childfree by choice, I care about the preservation of the global west for, at most, the next 40 years.

Fair enough.

Continuing on the thread of my argument, you could argue that in 30-40 years time your reliance on the society and any shared values will be very high - possibly at its highest in your life (though of course I'm just guessing, I know nothing about you). And elderly care seems to be among the most commonly outsourced. So even having a fixed horizon of caring doesn't invalidate the argument.

Wanting to raise children requires a giving mindset. In US, at least, we have a very self-focused culture. From a perspective of self-actualization, children don't make sense. Unless it turns out that nurturing and developing others is part of what it means to be human...

This line if reasoning is such bullshit, sorry. The underlying tone is always "childfree people are selfish", with the underlying message "parents are such giving people", as you pretty much explicitly say in your comment.

Except I have known plenty of parents, including some with gigantic families, who are some of the most selfish, narcissistic people I've ever met. They basically saw their children as an extension of themselves, like they were building some "noble family" bullshit or something. Simultaneously, I've also seen people without children who have dedicated their entire lives to public service and helping others.

Of course not all parents and people without parents are like this. I personally have never seen any evidence that those with or without kids (voluntarily) differ in their giving nature towards others.

Then why is this a worldwide phenomenon when standard of living rises to a certain level?

I think this thinking tries to obscure an immense yearning that is buried within people who may want families, but do not feel it is realistic for them. I know this because I post a lot about my own children on twitter and some of the DMs I get are essentially confessions from men and women saying exactly that.

In survey data completed fertility is usually way lower than desired fertility, and even then on surveys we cannot expect people to necessarily say what they really want if they do not think it is achievable for them.

Just make life harder for singles but way better for married couples especially those reaching having children stages. Higher taxes for singles. No subsidies for expensive homes. No benefits. Reduced healthcare.