Before I read the article, here are some thoughts as a GenX woman about how things have changed to make motherhood more difficult. Some of these trends reinforce each other. Statistically, less...
Before I read the article, here are some thoughts as a GenX woman about how things have changed to make motherhood more difficult. Some of these trends reinforce each other.
Statistically, less educated and more religious people have significantly more children than more educated, less religious people. As a mother, you are going to be associating with other parents and will likely struggle to keep childless friends. Your potential cohort of companions on this parenting journey might largely not be your preferred group of people.
There are fewer stay at home parents and retirees in most communities to assist with childcare then there were fifty years ago.
Helicopter parenting is a lot more demanding, a lot more work, than the stereotypical GenX in the US childhood experience where children were encouraged to leave the house and go play in the neighborhood until suppertime.
Those are my thoughts for now and I hope to come back and edit after reading the article.
I don’t want to challenge or invalidate your thoughts, but would like to suggest there’s a pretty big range of parenting styles between helicopter parenting and free range parenting.
I don’t want to challenge or invalidate your thoughts, but would like to suggest there’s a pretty big range of parenting styles between helicopter parenting and free range parenting.
I think this, while true, is somewhat overblown. I'm a parent of two in a small town with what I'd describe as a stereotypical small town conservative plurality. And even here it's possible to...
Statistically, less educated and more religious people have significantly more children than more educated, less religious people. As a mother, you are going to be associating with other parents and will likely struggle to keep childless friends. Your potential cohort of companions on this parenting journey might largely not be your preferred group of people.
I think this, while true, is somewhat overblown. I'm a parent of two in a small town with what I'd describe as a stereotypical small town conservative plurality. And even here it's possible to find other parents on similar wavelengths and associate with people out of choice. I imagine it's even easier in larger urban centers. I am more concerned once my kids get to start picking their own friends, but that's a reality no matter where or when you grow up.
You're right it's harder with childless friends, although by no means is it impossible. I find it's highly dependent on someone's understanding and patience of you being a parent as well as their disposition towards kids.
From the other side of that fence, for me it's largely about whether you added parenthood to your personality, or replaced your personality with parenthood. A lot of parents do the latter, and it...
You're right it's harder with childless friends, although by no means is it impossible. I find it's highly dependent on someone's understanding and patience of you being a parent as well as their disposition towards kids.
From the other side of that fence, for me it's largely about whether you added parenthood to your personality, or replaced your personality with parenthood. A lot of parents do the latter, and it leads to them being terribly frustrating to be friends with because I have no interest in the thing that has become the sole defining feature of their life. But if you're a person who is both a parent and also has other interesting facets, I can treat parenthood like I would a particularly time-consuming hobby you're into that I am not, and still happily engage with the rest of your personality.
I hear ya. I know lots of people like that. In fairness to parents, I'll just say parenting can be really hard and especially with little kids it can quickly define your life just based on how...
I hear ya. I know lots of people like that. In fairness to parents, I'll just say parenting can be really hard and especially with little kids it can quickly define your life just based on how all-consuming the task is whether you want it to or not. I agree that it's healthy to carve out a role for you as a person and not just a parent though.
It's true, and you only need a few friends to build a support community. The article and especially the headline were focused on motherhood being more intimidating and frightening today to people...
It's true, and you only need a few friends to build a support community. The article and especially the headline were focused on motherhood being more intimidating and frightening today to people who haven't yet had kids. . It was really about choices people make and variables they think about before having kids. They might be overblown and inaccurate, but they are part of the zeitgeist.
This is very true, and you aren't the only one with a say in this because your kids will pick their own friends and their parents may not be the sort you would want to associate with much.
Your potential cohort of companions on this parenting journey might largely not be your preferred group of people.
This is very true, and you aren't the only one with a say in this because your kids will pick their own friends and their parents may not be the sort you would want to associate with much.
Does this pressure to stay nimble and untethered explain millennial mom dread? It certainly offers some insight. Yet clearly, something more is going on. How to explain why, in survey after survey, it is women with the most financial resources, and the highest levels of education, who report the most stress and unhappiness with motherhood? We hear often that the US is the least family-friendly country in the industrialized world, but American women who describe the most dissatisfaction are also those most likely to work in jobs that do offer maternity leave, paid sick days, and remote-work flexibility. They’re most likely to have decent health insurance and the least likely to be raising a child on their own. Understanding what’s driving these feelings might be key to changing it — for me and millions of others.
I didn't read the article but the fact that most millennials have lived through multiple financial crisis certainly plays a part. I'm pretty well off but with a bulk of my wealth in various...
I didn't read the article but the fact that most millennials have lived through multiple financial crisis certainly plays a part. I'm pretty well off but with a bulk of my wealth in various markets, I am just one "once in a lifetime but already happened twice" catastrophe away from zeroing out my capital again.
Why would I want to have a kid in a place with no social safety nets where one day I could be fine and the next I could be wiped clean for a third time?
If you're not close to retirement age I don't understand the fear of the stock market dropping. When it drops like that it's time to invest more (assuming you're able to). If it literally does go...
If you're not close to retirement age I don't understand the fear of the stock market dropping. When it drops like that it's time to invest more (assuming you're able to). If it literally does go to zero then there's much more important things to worry about, like society continuing.
I think it's good that people want to raise their potential children in a perfect environment but that has never been the case throughout history. Improving, even slightly than the previous generation is more than enough to be worth raising children.
With that said, I'm glad people who don't want kids aren't having kids. The most important thing a child needs is loving parents, and resentful ones are horrible.
It's not just about retirement, a 529 (college savings fund) is also caught up in the stock market. Depending on market conditions when your children go off to college, you may have your kids'...
It's not just about retirement, a 529 (college savings fund) is also caught up in the stock market. Depending on market conditions when your children go off to college, you may have your kids' educations entirely covered, or you might as well have not even bothered.
Indeed. Having children is fraught with risks regardless of circumstance, and economic uncertainty only adds to that. On top of that, doing well is anything but a given these days, and as such...
Indeed. Having children is fraught with risks regardless of circumstance, and economic uncertainty only adds to that.
On top of that, doing well is anything but a given these days, and as such those with relatively stable financial situations and on-track careers are probably not all that keen on anything that could potentially put that status in peril. Even one child can take a couple from living well with some margin to constantly riding a knife’s edge, and while benefits like maternal leave and remote work flexibility are great they don’t move the needle nearly enough to sufficiently de-risk raising a family.
This article was pretty on the nose when it comes to my own situation. My husband and I want kids and despite me being in the group of "most likely to work in jobs that do offer maternity leave,...
This article was pretty on the nose when it comes to my own situation. My husband and I want kids and despite me being in the group of "most likely to work in jobs that do offer maternity leave, paid sick days, and remote-work flexibility" I feel intense anxiety and dread that I do think comes from hard shift into the negative portrayal of motherhood. All of the information about the bad parts is so important to know, but it does definitely color my feelings of things and leaves me terrified of what might go wrong, what my schedule will be, losing myself and all my free time, and all the other scary things I have been told to worry about. It feels like I am overinformed and I am stuck between being scared of this huge permanent change that is drummed up in a terrifying way, and the opposite side of not wanting to wait too long or I might lose my chance and having to deal with IVF and fertility issues and the whole other side that also gets too much play in my brain.
I haven't read the article but just from this section, I can totally understand the dread. I fall into the bucket of a millennial mom with a good job and education. I work for a company that...
I haven't read the article but just from this section, I can totally understand the dread. I fall into the bucket of a millennial mom with a good job and education. I work for a company that offers good leave and work remotely, but having a child is still a sacrifice and requires some serious discussions. And I'm pregnant with number 2. For me, a big part of this dread is childcare cost, increase in maternity mortality, high cost of medical care even with insurance, sacrifice in pay increases while on leave etc. Not to talk about the sacrifice you make emotionally and with your time making this decision.
Honestly this was really good long-form journalism. It read like a well cited journal where the author was preaching both to herself and anyone that reads this article. I don't feel like there's...
Honestly this was really good long-form journalism. It read like a well cited journal where the author was preaching both to herself and anyone that reads this article. I don't feel like there's much I can say other than agreeing that I feel a lot of the same anxieties about prioritizing kids when I have a good career going. I've always wanted children, but there's some conflict there.
What should I spend my time doing when there are so many things I could do? Is it worth prioritizing children over any random hobbies or relationships I currently have? That might be a false choice, but that's how it feels.
“The way to get people to care, to get people to have the most attention, is to frame things as ‘people will die,’ or ‘this is an emergency,’” one progressive lawmaker from Minnesota told me. “You can’t just say it would improve people’s lives.”
I felt this was one of the best points in the article. It gets at one of the core issues in media ethics; rage-baiting is just too effective for driving engagement. I'm not a doomer, but I get why people can get sucked into doom-scrolling and believing the world will soon end or at least fundamentally shift in their lifetimes. That said, coming from a hellfire-and-brimstone upbringing, I have a hard time panicking about the end times. Humanity has gotten through a lot worse, and I see plenty of reasons to believe that life will only get better. Or maybe that's just my own media bubble talking :)
This is ecofascist BS and it should not be accepted at face value. Overpopulation is not remotely close to the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change, and indeed there is no overpopulation...
This is ecofascist BS and it should not be accepted at face value. Overpopulation is not remotely close to the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change, and indeed there is no overpopulation -- we have more than enough resources to provide comfortable lives for everyone currently on earth if we as a species were inclined to distribute reaources more equitably. Insisting that we need to reduce the fertility rate to 0.01 for several decades is more extreme than even most ecofascists go, and it's inevitably tied to eugenics and culling those from impoverished countries.
I'm sure that would happen rather than the government sending the The Sans Deferens wagon or Fallopian Cube after the poors, the brown people, the undesirables, and you. It's OK, their Democratic...
I'm sure that would happen rather than the actually-rich people lobbying the government sending the The Sans Deferens wagon or Fallopian Cube after the poors, the brown people, the undesirables, and you. It's OK, their Democratic and Cool Sterilizomatic™ formula found out you were wasting electricity posting this to Tildes. Talk about rich!
It's not, it's resource hoarding of the wealthy nations driving climate change, not overpopulation. Overpopulation is a boogie man that allows us to focus on and blame developing nations for...
That overpopulation is the biggest and root cause of Anthropogenic climate change? That the climate-change tipping-point cascade will make the world unlivable?
It's not, it's resource hoarding of the wealthy nations driving climate change, not overpopulation. Overpopulation is a boogie man that allows us to focus on and blame developing nations for problem largely created by wealthy nations.
No, this is fundamentally confused. Don't mix thinking globally with personal decision-making. The world is very large. Either we're doomed or we aren't, and your personal decision isn't going to...
No, this is fundamentally confused. Don't mix thinking globally with personal decision-making. The world is very large. Either we're doomed or we aren't, and your personal decision isn't going to change it.
I guess, but you could also say the same about nuclear war, which is something people did worry a lot about at one time, and is still a possibilty. You could also worry about future pandemics....
I guess, but you could also say the same about nuclear war, which is something people did worry a lot about at one time, and is still a possibilty. You could also worry about future pandemics.
It's easy to imagine all sorts of doom scenarios. I support sensible disaster preparation, which is often underfunded. Buy appropriate amounts of insurance. Don't buy real estate in river's floodplain or somewhere that's vulnerable to sea level rise.
But I don't think getting too worried about one scenario is mentally healthy.
Just because people had kids under the weight of a potential nuclear holocaust doesn't mean it suddenly justifies their decision when we didn't blow ourselves up. And doesn't justify dismissing...
Just because people had kids under the weight of a potential nuclear holocaust doesn't mean it suddenly justifies their decision when we didn't blow ourselves up. And doesn't justify dismissing reservations about the quality of life of your children for future anxieties.
There's a difference between being paranoid and unhealthy and being concerned about your child's future. I don't think if I had kids they would be born into an apocalyptic hellscape, but my childhood and early adulthood were much more difficult than my parents, and will be even harder for my children if these economic and societal trends persist. I won't be able to afford a house in my lifetime. My kids may not be able to afford a studio apartment.
We can imagine lots of scenarios, but it doesn't seem like it's possible to predict the future income of an unborn child, where they would live, or what their rent would be? Life is a gamble. Some...
We can imagine lots of scenarios, but it doesn't seem like it's possible to predict the future income of an unborn child, where they would live, or what their rent would be? Life is a gamble. Some parents do end up with much tougher challenges than others. (Consider raising a child with severe disabilities.) Even siblings can have unpredictably different lives.
The unpredictability of it all is a major concern, and I don't dismiss that. I do think it's unhealthy to focus on a single scenario.
I won't have children - too late for us, even if we wanted to. I'll point out that what happens during a marriage is also hard to predict in advance. (And that has effects on children too.)
I suspect it comes down to deciding whether your family's emotional and financial resources are adequate to take the gamble. Other parents didn't know the future either.
This is precisely it. There are considerations about the future. All in all, it is a gamble. Some people are set up well for success, some people will have a lot more obstacles to provide for...
I suspect it comes down to deciding whether your family's emotional and financial resources are adequate to take the gamble.
This is precisely it. There are considerations about the future. All in all, it is a gamble. Some people are set up well for success, some people will have a lot more obstacles to provide for their kid. There seems to be a massive stigma against people who don't want to take a gamble they perceive as having bad odds. By virtue of being a gamble, somehow that means it'll work out in the end so it's not worth considering, which is explicitly not what a gamble is.
The article is about the ways people are discouraged from having kids. I think it's a little hard to say whether encouragement or discouragement wins overall. Is there really a "stigma?" Depends...
The article is about the ways people are discouraged from having kids. I think it's a little hard to say whether encouragement or discouragement wins overall. Is there really a "stigma?" Depends on the circumstances?
Maybe a fair summary is people are pretty undecided and conflicted about it nowadays.
Just something I've noticed in this context Someone says "Jump off a roof" and you're like "no, I'll probably break my leg" and they're like "yeah but you might not so you should do it anyway" is...
Just something I've noticed in this context
Someone says "Jump off a roof" and you're like "no, I'll probably break my leg" and they're like "yeah but you might not so you should do it anyway" is ridiculous.
Someone says "Have kids" and you're like "no, I'll probably ruin my finances or my kid's mental health" and they're like "yeah but you might not so you should do it anyway" is somehow not ridiculous.
That could just as easily be flipped though couldn't it? Because it seems like a glass half empty/half full situation. To add another comparison, if someone says "falling in love adds to life",...
That could just as easily be flipped though couldn't it? Because it seems like a glass half empty/half full situation. To add another comparison, if someone says "falling in love adds to life", are you going to say "No, I might get my heart broken, I rather be alone than face the risk"?
If it was even odds, a clear 50/50 "success" or "failure" to provide a satisfying life for your child, then sure you could flip it. There are a lot more factors involved to skew a decision like...
If it was even odds, a clear 50/50 "success" or "failure" to provide a satisfying life for your child, then sure you could flip it. There are a lot more factors involved to skew a decision like having kids away from an ambivalent 50/50.
It isn't my heart that's the only factor in the equation. It's empathy for the person I'm forcing into existence. They are not obligated to suffer on my behalf because I had a hunch it would work out.
The moralizers and the people who minimize the difficulty of having kids are obnoxious. However, some people find having kids to be meaningful and to enrich their life. Hard things are not always...
The moralizers and the people who minimize the difficulty of having kids are obnoxious. However, some people find having kids to be meaningful and to enrich their life. Hard things are not always bad. But hard things are not always good either. It is an incredibly personal choice.
No single raindrop is to blame for the flood No single snowflake for the avalanche No single pebble for the landslide No single cattle for the overgrazed land No single building for the urban...
No single raindrop is to blame for the flood
No single snowflake for the avalanche
No single pebble for the landslide
No single cattle for the overgrazed land
No single building for the urban sprawl
No single mortgage for the great recession
No single streetlight for the lack of stars
No single photon for the sunburnt skin
No single satellite for the ablation cascade
No single alga for the toxic bloom
No single plastic bag for the great garbage patch
No single molecule for the acidifying ocean
No single gust of wind for the hurricane
No single atom for the mushroom cloud
No single human for the changing climate
That poet poses an interesting question: how should we relate our individual actions to very large-scale phenomena, when they do add up? I’m reminded of an interview with Twitter’s former head of...
That poet poses an interesting question: how should we relate our individual actions to very large-scale phenomena, when they do add up?
Do you generally believe the platforms should be arbiters of truth?
I generally feel as though it is impossible and also that they have to try. It’s really true. You are never going to be able to fully succeed. You’re never going to be able to keep all bad things from happening.
…
I would tell this apocryphal story of this little boy who’s walking on the beach and there’s all these starfish that are stranded on the beach, trying to get back to the ocean before they die. And he’s walking along the beach, and every time he comes to a starfish, he’s picking up the starfish and he’s throwing it back in the water. And this guy comes along and asks, “What are you doing? There’s no point in doing that. There are literally thousands of starfish on this beach. You are never going to be able to make a difference here.” And the boy picks up the next starfish and tosses it into the ocean and says, “Made a difference to that one.”
But carbon emissions aren’t like that. You emit carbon dioxide every time you exhale, but it’s entirely harmless at an individual level. (The spread of contagious diseases are a more important effect, locally.) It matters only because it adds up, a worldwide sum that’s going up. A forest fire emits far more carbon than you possibly could.
If you want to help individuals, a much easier way to do that would be to help them prepare for and respond to the bad effects of climate change. You can do that at small scale, even one person at a time. You can do it for yourself, too.
For things that matter only at scale, our actions need to be part of something bigger. So the question is how can you meaningfully contribute to large-scale efforts?
It’s not easy to see how that happens. I expect the average person isn’t going to do much other than go along with group efforts started by others?
In particular, I don’t think one Vox article is going to affect fertility rates very much. It’s a contribution to a discussion of what’s going on.
I think this is fully dependent on what you mean by "need" here. Do our actions need to be part of something bigger for our actions to individually effect a great difference? Yes. Do our actions...
For things that matter only at scale, our actions need to be part of something bigger. So the question is how can you meaningfully contribute to large-scale efforts?
I think this is fully dependent on what you mean by "need" here. Do our actions need to be part of something bigger for our actions to individually effect a great difference? Yes. Do our actions need to be part of something bigger for our actions to be valuable? No. To paraphrase from another post:
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions absolutely does matter in the aggregate. How much is emitted in total determines the effect on the climate.
The climate change impact is complicated and means that most people doing what they can individually might not be enough to curtail it, but it's still the case that lower emissions are better.
You are right that most people individually have very little impact on emissions. But this would still be true for any world with a sizable population, because the population is very large and you are small in comparison. To have significant influence, you would have to influence a lot of people.
Yes, this is from a reply you made in another topic arguing why it's important to vote (specifically in U.S. presidential elections).
Going back to your comment I initially replied to, changing the context:
No, this is fundamentally confused. Don't mix thinking globallynationally with personal decision-making. The worldcountry is very large. Either we're doomedcandidate B wins or we aren'tthey don't, and your personal decision isn't going to change it.
I just don't see any important distinction between the situations. If I am right that you consider them different enough to treat them categorically different, can you articulate why you think so? In both, it is highly unlikely that the outcome is noticeably different because of your individual participation, and just as well in both all individual contributions matters in aggregate.
To be clear, it is my opinion that both of these things — voting as well as reducing one's greenhouse gas footprint — are valuable in their own right even if one's individual contribution isn't a deciding factor, and even if one isn't someone who tries to effect similar change in other people.
I agree that your effort doesn't need to be the "deciding factor." If the election is a landslide, there is no deciding factor and everyone on the winning side contributed (a tiny amount). And I...
I agree that your effort doesn't need to be the "deciding factor." If the election is a landslide, there is no deciding factor and everyone on the winning side contributed (a tiny amount).
And I think it's fine to just be a follower, going along with a larger effort.
But it's hard to see how tiny actions are going to add up without organization? They won't unless people are pulling in the same direction, so to speak. It's important to fix that.
So I guess I'm not entirely on board with "valuable in itself." It seems like more of a collective action thing?
Also, I do generally vote, I encourage others to do the same, but it's something of a matter of civic faith and if you can't make it for some personal reason, don't sweat it. It will probably be fine. The collective action is unlikely to succeed or fail due to one person.
The microscopic and macroscopic are fundamentally linked in the first place, though. Human society is unlikely to collapse due to overpopulation overnight, but that would imply a gradual decline...
The microscopic and macroscopic are fundamentally linked in the first place, though. Human society is unlikely to collapse due to overpopulation overnight, but that would imply a gradual decline of social support functions. The article supplies plenty of data to defend the idea that modern women have a more difficult time child-rearing. If that is only going to get more difficult in an overpopulated society, why willingly contribute to the problem and make one’s personal quality of life significantly worse in the meantime?
Even if we’re not doomed, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a worthwhile time being a parent either. We’ve reached a point where we can project climate expectations a few decades into the future and even in best case scenarios there’s hardly any projections where life gets better, let alone keeping the status quo.
Accounting for expected future value would be a fiscally prudent thing to do in any major financial decision, and perhaps that’s why the most well off among us (and most experienced in financial management) seem to have decided it’s not worth having kids. Those living in poverty may only see a relatively minor change in quality of life due to climate change, while the rich have much more to lose. Shouldn’t it be disconcerting that at a macroscopic level, the people most equipped in society to raise a child are consistently choosing not to? They make their decision independent of society currently collapsing, and yet it seems to be a calculated admission of its future demise.
The fertility rate in basically every developed country is already less than replacement. Fertility rates in general are dropping globally as well. It’s pretty well accepted that reproduction...
The fertility rate in basically every developed country is already less than replacement.
Fertility rates in general are dropping globally as well.
It’s pretty well accepted that reproduction isn’t the primary cause of climate change, and even ignoring that, we should try to reduce the stress and negative aspects of having children if we can, because it’s one of those basic, fundamental human drives that gives a lot of people a sense of fulfillment.
I mean, what’s the point of this whole thing otherwise?
This is false. EPA, sources of carbon emissions link Human activities, not human beings. The activities list at the end does not include "crawling on the floor" or "flying airplane of food into...
That overpopulation is the biggest and root cause of Anthropogenic climate change?
This is false.
Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.
Human activities, not human beings. The activities list at the end does not include "crawling on the floor" or "flying airplane of food into mouth."
Fertility is already beneath replacement for nearly all rich nations but our pollution rate keeps climbing up. The certainty of our anthropocene extinction is going to come from fewer people using more resources, rather than an explosion of humans using modest resources.
I feel like the article does a good job talking about the angry accusations of selfishness that potential parents receive from many people, though.
Before I read the article, here are some thoughts as a GenX woman about how things have changed to make motherhood more difficult. Some of these trends reinforce each other.
Statistically, less educated and more religious people have significantly more children than more educated, less religious people. As a mother, you are going to be associating with other parents and will likely struggle to keep childless friends. Your potential cohort of companions on this parenting journey might largely not be your preferred group of people.
There are fewer stay at home parents and retirees in most communities to assist with childcare then there were fifty years ago.
Helicopter parenting is a lot more demanding, a lot more work, than the stereotypical GenX in the US childhood experience where children were encouraged to leave the house and go play in the neighborhood until suppertime.
Those are my thoughts for now and I hope to come back and edit after reading the article.
I
I don’t want to challenge or invalidate your thoughts, but would like to suggest there’s a pretty big range of parenting styles between helicopter parenting and free range parenting.
These were half baked first impressions lol. I hope to come back with something more carefully considered. That said, I enjoyed free range as a kid.
I think this, while true, is somewhat overblown. I'm a parent of two in a small town with what I'd describe as a stereotypical small town conservative plurality. And even here it's possible to find other parents on similar wavelengths and associate with people out of choice. I imagine it's even easier in larger urban centers. I am more concerned once my kids get to start picking their own friends, but that's a reality no matter where or when you grow up.
You're right it's harder with childless friends, although by no means is it impossible. I find it's highly dependent on someone's understanding and patience of you being a parent as well as their disposition towards kids.
From the other side of that fence, for me it's largely about whether you added parenthood to your personality, or replaced your personality with parenthood. A lot of parents do the latter, and it leads to them being terribly frustrating to be friends with because I have no interest in the thing that has become the sole defining feature of their life. But if you're a person who is both a parent and also has other interesting facets, I can treat parenthood like I would a particularly time-consuming hobby you're into that I am not, and still happily engage with the rest of your personality.
I hear ya. I know lots of people like that. In fairness to parents, I'll just say parenting can be really hard and especially with little kids it can quickly define your life just based on how all-consuming the task is whether you want it to or not. I agree that it's healthy to carve out a role for you as a person and not just a parent though.
It's true, and you only need a few friends to build a support community. The article and especially the headline were focused on motherhood being more intimidating and frightening today to people who haven't yet had kids. . It was really about choices people make and variables they think about before having kids. They might be overblown and inaccurate, but they are part of the zeitgeist.
Fair point, I think it's a common perception that's definitely true to a degree I just hope it wouldn't solely deter someone from having kids.
This is very true, and you aren't the only one with a say in this because your kids will pick their own friends and their parents may not be the sort you would want to associate with much.
From the article:
I didn't read the article but the fact that most millennials have lived through multiple financial crisis certainly plays a part. I'm pretty well off but with a bulk of my wealth in various markets, I am just one "once in a lifetime but already happened twice" catastrophe away from zeroing out my capital again.
Why would I want to have a kid in a place with no social safety nets where one day I could be fine and the next I could be wiped clean for a third time?
If you're not close to retirement age I don't understand the fear of the stock market dropping. When it drops like that it's time to invest more (assuming you're able to). If it literally does go to zero then there's much more important things to worry about, like society continuing.
I think it's good that people want to raise their potential children in a perfect environment but that has never been the case throughout history. Improving, even slightly than the previous generation is more than enough to be worth raising children.
With that said, I'm glad people who don't want kids aren't having kids. The most important thing a child needs is loving parents, and resentful ones are horrible.
I think the real heart of it is, a lot of potential parents don't think their children's lives will be better.
I'd like to raise children in a better world but I'm also willing to raise children for a better world.
It's not just about retirement, a 529 (college savings fund) is also caught up in the stock market. Depending on market conditions when your children go off to college, you may have your kids' educations entirely covered, or you might as well have not even bothered.
Indeed. Having children is fraught with risks regardless of circumstance, and economic uncertainty only adds to that.
On top of that, doing well is anything but a given these days, and as such those with relatively stable financial situations and on-track careers are probably not all that keen on anything that could potentially put that status in peril. Even one child can take a couple from living well with some margin to constantly riding a knife’s edge, and while benefits like maternal leave and remote work flexibility are great they don’t move the needle nearly enough to sufficiently de-risk raising a family.
This article was pretty on the nose when it comes to my own situation. My husband and I want kids and despite me being in the group of "most likely to work in jobs that do offer maternity leave, paid sick days, and remote-work flexibility" I feel intense anxiety and dread that I do think comes from hard shift into the negative portrayal of motherhood. All of the information about the bad parts is so important to know, but it does definitely color my feelings of things and leaves me terrified of what might go wrong, what my schedule will be, losing myself and all my free time, and all the other scary things I have been told to worry about. It feels like I am overinformed and I am stuck between being scared of this huge permanent change that is drummed up in a terrifying way, and the opposite side of not wanting to wait too long or I might lose my chance and having to deal with IVF and fertility issues and the whole other side that also gets too much play in my brain.
This article feels like it was written for me.
I haven't read the article but just from this section, I can totally understand the dread. I fall into the bucket of a millennial mom with a good job and education. I work for a company that offers good leave and work remotely, but having a child is still a sacrifice and requires some serious discussions. And I'm pregnant with number 2. For me, a big part of this dread is childcare cost, increase in maternity mortality, high cost of medical care even with insurance, sacrifice in pay increases while on leave etc. Not to talk about the sacrifice you make emotionally and with your time making this decision.
Honestly this was really good long-form journalism. It read like a well cited journal where the author was preaching both to herself and anyone that reads this article. I don't feel like there's much I can say other than agreeing that I feel a lot of the same anxieties about prioritizing kids when I have a good career going. I've always wanted children, but there's some conflict there.
What should I spend my time doing when there are so many things I could do? Is it worth prioritizing children over any random hobbies or relationships I currently have? That might be a false choice, but that's how it feels.
I felt this was one of the best points in the article. It gets at one of the core issues in media ethics; rage-baiting is just too effective for driving engagement. I'm not a doomer, but I get why people can get sucked into doom-scrolling and believing the world will soon end or at least fundamentally shift in their lifetimes. That said, coming from a hellfire-and-brimstone upbringing, I have a hard time panicking about the end times. Humanity has gotten through a lot worse, and I see plenty of reasons to believe that life will only get better. Or maybe that's just my own media bubble talking :)
I'm not going to think about having kids until I can afford a suitable place to raise them.
Can I add my 5 cents after reading the article? For me it looks like message is "childrens become very major disadvantage".
This is ecofascist BS and it should not be accepted at face value. Overpopulation is not remotely close to the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change, and indeed there is no overpopulation -- we have more than enough resources to provide comfortable lives for everyone currently on earth if we as a species were inclined to distribute reaources more equitably. Insisting that we need to reduce the fertility rate to 0.01 for several decades is more extreme than even most ecofascists go, and it's inevitably tied to eugenics and culling those from impoverished countries.
I'm sure that would happen rather than
the actually-rich people lobbyingthe government sending the The Sans Deferens wagon or Fallopian Cube after the poors, the brown people, the undesirables, and you. It's OK, their Democratic and Cool Sterilizomatic™ formula found out you were wasting electricity posting this to Tildes. Talk about rich!It's not, it's resource hoarding of the wealthy nations driving climate change, not overpopulation. Overpopulation is a boogie man that allows us to focus on and blame developing nations for problem largely created by wealthy nations.
No, this is fundamentally confused. Don't mix thinking globally with personal decision-making. The world is very large. Either we're doomed or we aren't, and your personal decision isn't going to change it.
If we're doomed, then a personal decision to keep a child out of the doomed world means saving one human from unnecessary suffering.
I guess, but you could also say the same about nuclear war, which is something people did worry a lot about at one time, and is still a possibilty. You could also worry about future pandemics.
It's easy to imagine all sorts of doom scenarios. I support sensible disaster preparation, which is often underfunded. Buy appropriate amounts of insurance. Don't buy real estate in river's floodplain or somewhere that's vulnerable to sea level rise.
But I don't think getting too worried about one scenario is mentally healthy.
Just because people had kids under the weight of a potential nuclear holocaust doesn't mean it suddenly justifies their decision when we didn't blow ourselves up. And doesn't justify dismissing reservations about the quality of life of your children for future anxieties.
There's a difference between being paranoid and unhealthy and being concerned about your child's future. I don't think if I had kids they would be born into an apocalyptic hellscape, but my childhood and early adulthood were much more difficult than my parents, and will be even harder for my children if these economic and societal trends persist. I won't be able to afford a house in my lifetime. My kids may not be able to afford a studio apartment.
We can imagine lots of scenarios, but it doesn't seem like it's possible to predict the future income of an unborn child, where they would live, or what their rent would be? Life is a gamble. Some parents do end up with much tougher challenges than others. (Consider raising a child with severe disabilities.) Even siblings can have unpredictably different lives.
The unpredictability of it all is a major concern, and I don't dismiss that. I do think it's unhealthy to focus on a single scenario.
I won't have children - too late for us, even if we wanted to. I'll point out that what happens during a marriage is also hard to predict in advance. (And that has effects on children too.)
I suspect it comes down to deciding whether your family's emotional and financial resources are adequate to take the gamble. Other parents didn't know the future either.
This is precisely it. There are considerations about the future. All in all, it is a gamble. Some people are set up well for success, some people will have a lot more obstacles to provide for their kid. There seems to be a massive stigma against people who don't want to take a gamble they perceive as having bad odds. By virtue of being a gamble, somehow that means it'll work out in the end so it's not worth considering, which is explicitly not what a gamble is.
The article is about the ways people are discouraged from having kids. I think it's a little hard to say whether encouragement or discouragement wins overall. Is there really a "stigma?" Depends on the circumstances?
Maybe a fair summary is people are pretty undecided and conflicted about it nowadays.
Just something I've noticed in this context
Someone says "Jump off a roof" and you're like "no, I'll probably break my leg" and they're like "yeah but you might not so you should do it anyway" is ridiculous.
Someone says "Have kids" and you're like "no, I'll probably ruin my finances or my kid's mental health" and they're like "yeah but you might not so you should do it anyway" is somehow not ridiculous.
That could just as easily be flipped though couldn't it? Because it seems like a glass half empty/half full situation. To add another comparison, if someone says "falling in love adds to life", are you going to say "No, I might get my heart broken, I rather be alone than face the risk"?
If it was even odds, a clear 50/50 "success" or "failure" to provide a satisfying life for your child, then sure you could flip it. There are a lot more factors involved to skew a decision like having kids away from an ambivalent 50/50.
It isn't my heart that's the only factor in the equation. It's empathy for the person I'm forcing into existence. They are not obligated to suffer on my behalf because I had a hunch it would work out.
The moralizers and the people who minimize the difficulty of having kids are obnoxious. However, some people find having kids to be meaningful and to enrich their life. Hard things are not always bad. But hard things are not always good either. It is an incredibly personal choice.
No single raindrop is to blame for the flood
No single snowflake for the avalanche
No single pebble for the landslide
No single cattle for the overgrazed land
No single building for the urban sprawl
No single mortgage for the great recession
No single streetlight for the lack of stars
No single photon for the sunburnt skin
No single satellite for the ablation cascade
No single alga for the toxic bloom
No single plastic bag for the great garbage patch
No single molecule for the acidifying ocean
No single gust of wind for the hurricane
No single atom for the mushroom cloud
No single human for the changing climate
That poet poses an interesting question: how should we relate our individual actions to very large-scale phenomena, when they do add up?
I’m reminded of an interview with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety:
…
But carbon emissions aren’t like that. You emit carbon dioxide every time you exhale, but it’s entirely harmless at an individual level. (The spread of contagious diseases are a more important effect, locally.) It matters only because it adds up, a worldwide sum that’s going up. A forest fire emits far more carbon than you possibly could.
If you want to help individuals, a much easier way to do that would be to help them prepare for and respond to the bad effects of climate change. You can do that at small scale, even one person at a time. You can do it for yourself, too.
For things that matter only at scale, our actions need to be part of something bigger. So the question is how can you meaningfully contribute to large-scale efforts?
It’s not easy to see how that happens. I expect the average person isn’t going to do much other than go along with group efforts started by others?
In particular, I don’t think one Vox article is going to affect fertility rates very much. It’s a contribution to a discussion of what’s going on.
I think this is fully dependent on what you mean by "need" here. Do our actions need to be part of something bigger for our actions to individually effect a great difference? Yes. Do our actions need to be part of something bigger for our actions to be valuable? No. To paraphrase from another post:
Yes, this is from a reply you made in another topic arguing why it's important to vote (specifically in U.S. presidential elections).
Going back to your comment I initially replied to, changing the context:
I just don't see any important distinction between the situations. If I am right that you consider them different enough to treat them categorically different, can you articulate why you think so? In both, it is highly unlikely that the outcome is noticeably different because of your individual participation, and just as well in both all individual contributions matters in aggregate.
To be clear, it is my opinion that both of these things — voting as well as reducing one's greenhouse gas footprint — are valuable in their own right even if one's individual contribution isn't a deciding factor, and even if one isn't someone who tries to effect similar change in other people.
I agree that your effort doesn't need to be the "deciding factor." If the election is a landslide, there is no deciding factor and everyone on the winning side contributed (a tiny amount).
And I think it's fine to just be a follower, going along with a larger effort.
But it's hard to see how tiny actions are going to add up without organization? They won't unless people are pulling in the same direction, so to speak. It's important to fix that.
So I guess I'm not entirely on board with "valuable in itself." It seems like more of a collective action thing?
Also, I do generally vote, I encourage others to do the same, but it's something of a matter of civic faith and if you can't make it for some personal reason, don't sweat it. It will probably be fine. The collective action is unlikely to succeed or fail due to one person.
The microscopic and macroscopic are fundamentally linked in the first place, though. Human society is unlikely to collapse due to overpopulation overnight, but that would imply a gradual decline of social support functions. The article supplies plenty of data to defend the idea that modern women have a more difficult time child-rearing. If that is only going to get more difficult in an overpopulated society, why willingly contribute to the problem and make one’s personal quality of life significantly worse in the meantime?
Even if we’re not doomed, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a worthwhile time being a parent either. We’ve reached a point where we can project climate expectations a few decades into the future and even in best case scenarios there’s hardly any projections where life gets better, let alone keeping the status quo.
Accounting for expected future value would be a fiscally prudent thing to do in any major financial decision, and perhaps that’s why the most well off among us (and most experienced in financial management) seem to have decided it’s not worth having kids. Those living in poverty may only see a relatively minor change in quality of life due to climate change, while the rich have much more to lose. Shouldn’t it be disconcerting that at a macroscopic level, the people most equipped in society to raise a child are consistently choosing not to? They make their decision independent of society currently collapsing, and yet it seems to be a calculated admission of its future demise.
The fertility rate in basically every developed country is already less than replacement.
Fertility rates in general are dropping globally as well.
It’s pretty well accepted that reproduction isn’t the primary cause of climate change, and even ignoring that, we should try to reduce the stress and negative aspects of having children if we can, because it’s one of those basic, fundamental human drives that gives a lot of people a sense of fulfillment.
I mean, what’s the point of this whole thing otherwise?
This is false.
Human activities, not human beings. The activities list at the end does not include "crawling on the floor" or "flying airplane of food into mouth."
Fertility is already beneath replacement for nearly all rich nations but our pollution rate keeps climbing up. The certainty of our anthropocene extinction is going to come from fewer people using more resources, rather than an explosion of humans using modest resources.
I feel like the article does a good job talking about the angry accusations of selfishness that potential parents receive from many people, though.
Smh these babies wasting fossil fuels on unnecessary airplanes. Parents should choose lower emission food delivery metaphors, like bicycles. /joke