Kids used to be seen as a way to increase quality of life. They were free labor and a retirement plan all rolled into one.

They still are seen as a way to increase quality of life but in a more vibey sort of way.

Quality of life was terrible, but some things were still easier. Most importantly, that terrible quality of life was cheap enough that your kids could probably support you in your old age. Medical care wasn't so advanced, which is cheaper, but also means you had a good chance of dying younger or of a condition we could cure today. Housing was cheaper but also worse back then. Investments weren't accessible to the vast majority of people and "retirement" as a concept didn't really exist for the lower classes except as an idea that you would probably be too old to effectively do your job someday. Nowadays, your kids probably can't afford to support you into your old age, and you probably don't have a pension, which means making more money now so that you don't have to work until you die. You have a lot more options for a higher quality of life, but they tend to require that you prioritize money over a family unless you are either in the privileged position of being able to afford both or poor enough that it doesn't matter.

People didn’t have a choice back then. So the two options now are: “force people to have kids” or “make life better for people so they want kids”. I’d like to think we’ve evolved enough as a society to choose the later option.

There is no later option, actually. No matter how good life would be - people won't have more children. Prosperity in the context of fertility matters only in relative values, not in absolute values. People have a lot of children not when they are wealthy, but when they are wealthier than others, and so it always be minority, no matter how good life are.

Was it more terrible? You certainly had more organic social connections and family support. Physically tougher than a modern white collar job? Sure. Better than commuting and working for some shitty boss though!

Try asking that after spending a while living in a tenement building with 3 people per room and frequent outbreaks of dysentery and smallpox.

People still live like this today.

extremely rare in countries with falling birth rates

We take so much for granted. Living in a world without electricity, medicine, food scarcity, lack of safety net.

Family didn't offer as much support as it appears. Average kids are working farms rich children are sent away to be raised.

The social bonds of the modern world still exist in the same places as the past. It starts with the church.. so if you crave the social connections you can still go to church to find it.

You almost had a coherent point until the last sentence. I'll take my social bonds without the side-order of dogma, thanks.

What bonds people in the past is religious dogma. We removed it and we wonder why our social bonds are so weak.

I'm not suggesting we go back but we have nothing to replace it. The one thing a church did was welcome in everyone. We don't have places like that anymore.

I guess I have to tell my local card shop to stop welcoming everyone on Commander night, because you're only allowed to do that if you're a church.

Welcoming people with money who buy cards as a promotion to sell goods.

It's not a place to hold a wedding or funeral. You can't go inside and sit down without someone trying to sell you something.

Some form of community can happen at a card shop. I use to hang around one when a was younger. Also got kicked out every now and then for hanging out too much.

I got married in a public park. It was free and everyone can convene there. What it doesn't do is insulate you from people you may find disagreeable or distasteful, which a church does.

Most places require a permit but aside from that, that's a personal event you invited people you know to. Everyone can't convene there. It's a one time event and because you pick the guests it does insulate you from people you find disagreeable.

Surely you are now arguing against your own point? If one holds a wedding at a church, it is typically not open to the public any more than a wedding in a park. "Wedding crashers" aside, you invite people you know and it is typically not expected nor desired for the general public to attend. It's nothing unusual; churches schedule time for weddings all the time, and then go right back to being a public gathering space once the event is over. I should add, since it's part of the core of this debate, that the idea that churches are universally welcoming or truly public is itself debatable: they hold a religious function and while churches are usually open to all attendees, you will struggle to find community there unless you share the religious beliefs of the other attendees. That is to say, the church as a structure is open to all; the church as a community is not.

For what it's worth, my wedding was intentionally kept small, which allowed us to hold a ceremony without a permit and without closing off any public areas.

ipaddr has a point.

The average person (non-scientist, non-technical) has replaced belief in the supernatural and the church with belief in science and the institutions of the state, and though there have been major improvements, we haven't completely refactored the old yet. Community and meaning is major functionality that we have yet to figure out anew.

I mean, this is the concept of the "third space." They have existed throughout history and while churches are certainly one example, they are not the only example. A church (or temple or mosque or whatever) fills a certain community role as a gathering space for religious worship, but it's not the only place where you can meet and talk to people.

Come up with a third space to rival the church of old and you’ll be hailed as a cultural hero for the next millenium. Starbucks has not cut it.

Jim Rouse thought it would be the shopping mall and designed my city of residence (Columbia, MD) with the shopping mall at its center.

It was a decent bet for 1967.

American shopping malls of the mid-to-late 20th century were a decent bet, but I think they fail because a) they're very pedestrian hostile, b) they tend to be owned by a singular landlord that can enforce policies that discourage gathering, and c) they just kind of smack of artificiality. But bazaars, street markets, and other commercial areas have certainly been third-places since before long before it was a defined term. Heck, the ancient Greeks were quite proud of their agora.

I imagine that birth control as well as the giant array of entertainment options available to us other than sex contributes to modern fertility

Why do poorer people have more kids? Sex is free, birth control and netflix is not

Poor people are also more religious, and in the age of birth control,religions that don't explicitly require their adherents to procreate will have far fewer followers than those that do after just a few generations.

> In the past, quality of life was terrible compared to modern life but fertility was not an issue.

not sure which "past" you're referring to, but in agricultural societies, more kids was important to survival and quality of life, as you needed hands on the farm; also, the child mortality rate was much higher so you had to have more kids to start with; that was also pre-birth control -- as soon as that was introduced the birth rate started to fall tremendously