This was one of the factors in our decision not to have children. In addition to just not having the desire to have children, we didn't feel any obligation to society to reproduce either. There...
This was one of the factors in our decision not to have children. In addition to just not having the desire to have children, we didn't feel any obligation to society to reproduce either. There are more than enough people (both existing and on the way) that society will continue to function just fine without us creating additional humans.
One framing I have on this is to view it as a generational sacrifice for the betterment of the world and future generations. Long essay, got a bit carried away. In an ideal world, we would have...
Exemplary
One framing I have on this is to view it as a generational sacrifice for the betterment of the world and future generations. Long essay, got a bit carried away.
In an ideal world, we would have more elegant ways of controlling our environmental impact other than the brute force method of population control. But our current economic and political model, or really any post-industrial one we've ever had, has proven to be completely incapable of doing this. We currently, as a civilization, simply do not know how to run an industrialized society without huge per-capita environmental impact. In our current system, living even a modest standard of living in a developed country means having a massive ecological impact. Maybe we can come up with a better system that could allow us to live a decent standard of living while also not destroying the environment. But I have zero faith in us cracking that problem before the biosphere collapses entirely.
We know we're having an unsustainably large impact on the biosphere. Yes, greenhouse gases are likely the most imminently important one today, but there are many others. We can throw sulfur into the atmosphere to lower the planet's temp, but that won't save the oceans from acidification. We can cut carbon emissions, but that won't reverse the contamination of microplastics. You can completely ban fossil fuels, but soil erosion, habitat loss, aquifer depletion, and a hundred other environmental crises we're staring down the barrel of will remain.
And I mean "unsustainable" in a very literal sense. We're having an unsustainable impact on the planet because we are doing numerous things that we literally cannot do indefinitely. Inevitably, we will hit some hard limits that it will cause such vast ecological disaster that our own population will crater. We are chipping away at the ecological foundation keeping our species standing. If we do not reduce our impact, nature will reduce our impact for us. Maybe we'll just pile up so much plastic in the environment that half the people will die of lymphoma before age 12. Maybe global warming goes off the rails and 90% of the human population is poached alive in apocalyptic heatwaves. Maybe the vast majority of us just starve when farm yields plummet for any number of possible reasons. If we don't do something to pause and then reduce our impact on this planet, at some point we will run headfirst into a wall. I don't know whether that will come in 2040 or 2400, but it will happen. Indefinite growth is not possible in a finite universe. And we are well past a sustainable level right now.
We need to reduce our impact. In our current economic system, voluntarily choosing not to have kids is the single greatest thing a person can do to lower future ecological impacts. Nothing else comes close. And from a humanitarian perspective, is this not the ideal outcome? We know we're having too great an impact. We know we need to reduce our numbers. An author of dystopian sci fi in the 1970s might have projected that by now governments would have gone full dystopian and started harshly controlling population, China's One Child Policy mutated into a global birth licensing and control scheme. That's what they would have thought back then would be needed to reign in population growth.
But here we are, in the real 2024, and the population problem seems to just be solving itself. Unless you count economic coercion, no one is being denied the right to have a child. No one is being forcibly sterilized. Unlicensed or disabled children aren't being euthanized en masse and rendered into Soylent Green. The worst predictions of 1970s sci fi, which did often feature predictions of our present time, painted a pretty dark picture. This was an era when overpopulation, The Population Bomb, etc. were really part of the Zeitgeist. But these things simply didn't come to pass, and a dropping of birth rates is likely a major reason many of them didn't.
What now seems to be the case is that it's a pretty universal human experience that if you give women education, the ability to willingly access contraception, and the right to a work and and an independent existence, birth rates plummet. When women are treated like property, they're inevitably also treated like breeding stock. Giving women rights results in lower birth rates.
And rather than decry it, I think that's a good thing. Again, we do ultimately need to reduce our numbers. And what less painful way to do this could there possibly be than for us, as individuals or couples, to simply choose not to have kids? No dystopian police state. No mass famine death after an ecological collapse. Just a steady drop in our numbers until we're back at a sustainable level. Let the present age be remembered as "the fossil boom (n): a period from approximately 1800-2200, where global human population spiked from 1 to 10 billion over the course of two centuries, and then, miraculously, returned back to one billion peacefully over the next two centuries."
Is this a perfect solution? No. First, if all things were truly equal, I think having more people alive at once is a good thing in and of itself. Human population should ideally be set at whatever can be sustainably supported on Earth. And that number will vary with changes in technology. If new tech allows more people with the same footprint, then sure, go for more people. The more the merrier. To be alive is a beautiful miracle, and the more that can experience it, the better. We just need to make sure we can keep that number going into the far future.
Finally, the economic impacts can't be ignored. Those are the real immediate concern rather than esoteric concerns about the meaning of life and all that. And yes, if they have fewer children in their childbearing years, each generation that does that will have to pay for it in the form of a more expensive retirement. Retirees by definition live off the labor of those younger than them, in various degrees of obfuscation. On a personal level, foregoing children means you won't be having biological children to lean on in your retirement. On a national level, it means cuts to pension systems and reduced stock market returns. If your generation, (Millennials, Gen Z, Alpha, doesn't matter), has fewer children, you will likely have to work a few more years to be able to afford retirement. It is almost inevitable. (Assuming total ecological collapse doesn't occur before you reach retirement years.)
In short, by choosing to have fewer kids, we will have to pay the price for it later. But that is the key. WE will pay the price. Not our children or our children's children. No. WE will pay it. As a generation, we will still have kids, but we will simply have fewer than are needed to maintain our present numbers. Our collective children will live in whatever a capitalist version of a worker's paradise is. With a shrinking and greying population, the labor of the young is in absolutely tremendous demand. We're already seeing surging wages in many industries that were previously used to relying on cheap labor.
With a shrinking population, the NIMBYs have the last laugh. Rather than growing housing to meet demand, we'll instead shrink population to match the housing supply! Homes will give less of a return on investment, but they'll be easier to acquire. That sounds like a better world to me. The only people who will want to own homes are those who want to live in them. If only.
We, the current generation of child-bearing age, will pay the price in the form of a reduced standard of living in our golden years. But the children our generation does have will enjoy opportunities we ourselves could never dream of, and their chances of not driving full-speed into an ecological brick wall will hopefully decrease.
We have failed on so many fronts. We have completely failed to reign in our leaders, and our entire political and economic systems seem utterly incapable of avoiding even obviously apparent disaster. We have failed on so many fronts. Even the biggest headline issue, carbon emissions, just keep going up and up. We keep issuing oil leases in record numbers. There's talk of curtailing emissions, but at the same time, investment and approval to massively expand emissions just keeps rolling along. The machine can't be stopped.
But here is something we, as a generation, can do that will actually have a meaningful impact. We will pay a price, but future generations will be better for it. A generational sacrifice for the betterment of the world. I know this is certainly not such a clean story. There are other negatives to population reduction that I didn't get into, but I still believe that we do need to reduce our numbers, or eventually nature will likely reduce them for us. And I can think of no better way to do that than for people to simply voluntarily choose to have fewer kids. We pay the price, and our children and the world they inherit will be better for it.
So here's the thing. I agree with much of your post, particularily about women's rights and unsustainability. But raising children is incredibly expensive. It's a huge economic drain that parents...
So here's the thing. I agree with much of your post, particularily about women's rights and unsustainability.
But raising children is incredibly expensive. It's a huge economic drain that parents have that childless people do not. Even now, I see childfree adults splurging on high-end luxuries at double the rate that I do despite earning half what I do. Ostensibly that means I'm 'putting in' double the paid economic labor and unpaid domestic labor for lower overall consumption of non-essential goods.
So if the childless people will depend on the children of the people whom raised children, they need to accept a good bit of that economic burden. Otherwise, childbearing adults will be permanently economically disadvantaged, while the childfree adults will be free to consume and save at a higher rate...allowing them to potentially retire while forcing the people who raised the next workforce work until they die.
$400/month per child cared for under 18 should do it. Maybe more... 800/mo would level the economic scales a bit better. After that, the parents get to retire 10 years earlier than their peers, because they spent their 20s/30s/40s/50s working a second full-time job so their children will be empathetic enough to not dump the leeching geezers in the ocean.
Childfree people already subsidize those who have children. We pay more in taxes because we can't claim any deductions or child tax credits. We also pay a significant amount of our property taxes...
Childfree people already subsidize those who have children. We pay more in taxes because we can't claim any deductions or child tax credits. We also pay a significant amount of our property taxes towards programs for children like schools and playgrounds, which we'll never take advantage of.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally fine with subsidizing these things. An educated populace is a good thing for everyone. And I also realize that these things don't completely cover the cost of having kids. But nobody is forcing you have children. That's a choice that you willingly make, knowing the expense involved. I don't support saddling others with the cost of your choices any more than I support corporate tax subsidies.
Yup, single and childfree people have always paid the vast majority of taxes (relatively) in comparison to benefits we get back from the system. Children are very expensive, but married people on...
Yup, single and childfree people have always paid the vast majority of taxes (relatively) in comparison to benefits we get back from the system. Children are very expensive, but married people on average make much more money than single people (family bias in employers) and receive more tax credits.
In my opinion, this seems somewhat more antagonistic than is warranted. I won't speculate on why, I neither have children nor particularly want them and therefore lack that half of the context,...
In my opinion, this seems somewhat more antagonistic than is warranted. I won't speculate on why, I neither have children nor particularly want them and therefore lack that half of the context, but I will remark that seems to be a common view of those with children vis-a-vis the childless.
I do take a certain degree of umbrage at the notion of the childless elderly being leeches, however. It implies that there isn't some give for the take, and that simply isn't true, if for no other reason than the fact that they'll be paying for it out-of-pocket. The children will be paid to take care of people, childless or otherwise. Monetary compensation for taking care of someone is far from leeching. Presumably your children will take care of you for near-free in your old age (a reasonably common argument made by those with children, but I'm not trying to imply that's why you had children), so an argument can be made that the economic burden is still borne but at a different time in one's life.
As far as luxury purchases go, I would urge you to remember that a significant portion of those will have been made on credit, at least in the US. Keeping up with the Jones can be a significant debt trap.
So I know part of this is that I have plenty of money for myself (but no home ownership or fancy car). But I don't understand the worship of money and projection of wealth most Americans perform....
Keeping up with the Jones can be a significant debt trap.
So I know part of this is that I have plenty of money for myself (but no home ownership or fancy car). But I don't understand the worship of money and projection of wealth most Americans perform. It's so cheap to rethink your approach to life. Why go into debt for a Tesla when you could exchange your greed for humility? Maybe it's a lack of positive role models. Professionals who use their skills to maximize happiness and relaxation instead of their image.
Can’t speak for other parts of the world, but in the US I think it’s a result of how we tend to tie self-worth to and define ourselves by our occupation and compensation. Projection of wealth is...
Can’t speak for other parts of the world, but in the US I think it’s a result of how we tend to tie self-worth to and define ourselves by our occupation and compensation.
Projection of wealth is very old and something people have been doing probably since the development of society, but the importance placed in employment in the US turns it up to 11. Symbols of wealth are tied not only to money, but also to the idea that their owner is a hard worker working a respectable job that’s highly valued by society, which then implies that by not keeping up with the Joneses, one hasn’t worked as hard and/or is working a less respected or valued job, and is thus lesser.
Thinking about it, it probably also has a lot to do with the idea that a lot of people have on some level bought into that anything is possible in America if one works hard enough, which in reality is only tenuously true.
What you are saying has always been the case. There have always been people who have children and those who don't. Think of all those celibate monks and nuns in the Middle Ages, for one. We have a...
What you are saying has always been the case. There have always been people who have children and those who don't. Think of all those celibate monks and nuns in the Middle Ages, for one. We have a word for it that's been used for decades. Remember Mr. Dink? There have always been some people that choose or are unable to have kids.
Moreover, it gets really messy when you try to define who should give and receive compensation for the economic burden of raising children. I work as an educator for undergraduates. I'm going to spend my whole career teaching young people. Do I still have to pay these increased taxes to ease the economic burden of childcare? What about the people working at the childcare centers, who are paid little and probably can't afford kids of their own. Do they have to pay for these subsidies? Because if only half the population is have kids, and they're receiving $800/month, that means the other half is paying $800/month in additional taxes. What about the people working at the factory that makes the diapers for your kid? What about their school teachers? What about the people programming the apps on those tablets they spend all day one? And on and on.
This is one of the big problems with mass subsidization of child rearing. Plenty of countries with falling birth rates have gone down the route you're suggesting, heavily subsidizing parental leave, providing universal healthcare, free university education, etc. But they've all failed to move the needle on birth rates. And the reason is that being a parent is so much work that to really encourage people to do it would require more money than any country can afford to pay. You want $800/month for 18 years? I assume that's probably on top of universal healthcare, free college education, etc. And you want to retire 10 years earlier? The average social security benefit is about $1800/month. So in addition to the other government programs, you want $800/month for 18 years and $1800/month for 10 years. That's $388,000. And yes, that's is the kind of money we would need to throw around to really have an measurable impact on birth rates.
But again, if half the population is receiving on average about $400k in direct payment subsidies for their work raising children, then the other half has to pay $400k on average. That has to come out of the pockets of the people producing all the goods and services you as a parent rely upon. You're talking about a substantial portion of the total lifetime earnings of everyone who doesn't have a child.
And you think this would ever in a thousand lifetimes be politically possible...why? Half the population is not going to vote to drive itself into poverty to subsidize those who are fortunate enough to be able to have children. Do not assume that just because people choose not to have kids, that they would not enjoy having kids. I would very much like to do so. But as we would need to use IVF and surrogacy anyway, and combined that with the very real concerns about bringing children into this world right now, what kind of world they'll face, et. No, it just wasn't worth it. We'll look at adoption, but we're skipping having bio kids. And I imagine the same applies to many childfree couples.
I'm not going to vote to impoverish myself because we already are going to have to work longer to support ourselves completely in retirement. We won't at least any genetic kids to rely on. Your children will not be forced into involuntary labor, they will be paid, and paid better than our generation was paid.
Finally, do not discount the sacrifice of choosing not to have kids. After all, you yourself chose to have kids (assuming it was an active choice you made.) You knew the costs going in, and you decided that you would gain enough emotional satisfaction out of having children to make the cost and effort worthwhile. And if it's emotionally worth it for you to have kids, why would you assume the same doesn't apply to many childfree couples? The perspective I outlined in my essay was one of people who choose not to have kids at least in part out of concerns for the future of the world. To end the cycle of consumption and environmental deterioration and not pass it on.
I assume you love your children. I assume you love them very much. Imagine if someone asked you to sacrifice them for the good of the world. And then imagine you did that, and someone asked you to pay 400 grand even after you made that sacrifice.
tax-free monthly payment to families with children under the age of 18.
$145.83 per month for the first child;
$41.66 per month for the first child in a single parent family;
$91.66 per month for the second child; and
$75 per month for each additional child.
That’s $737.70/month for the first 17 years, not at all far from the $800/month originally mentioned, without going too far into the early retirement plan that was suggested, but I would also suggest that the cost of retiring early in Canada would be sharply less expensive due to the national health care program which is now going to include pharmacare (prescription drugs also paid for).
I was replying specifically to the original comment, and I would agree that subsidies on the order of Canada's certainly are possible. Yet, Canada is still an illustrative example. Canada has...
I was replying specifically to the original comment, and I would agree that subsidies on the order of Canada's certainly are possible. Yet, Canada is still an illustrative example. Canada has universal healthcare and the generous child subsidies you described. But what has that done to actually increase the birth rate? Canada's birth rate is lower than that of the US.
Again, no country has succeeded at really cracking this problem. And I think it's because no country can afford to pay enough to really make a difference. I think you would have to do something similar to what vord suggested, subsidies so generous they're a sizable fraction of people's total lifetime income.
You're not comparing apples to apples though -- Canada is significantly more educated than the United States so we would expect its birth rate to be lower in a vacuum. I'm not sure what sort of...
Canada has universal healthcare and the generous child subsidies you described. But what has that done to actually increase the birth rate? Canada's birth rate is lower than that of the US.
You're not comparing apples to apples though -- Canada is significantly more educated than the United States so we would expect its birth rate to be lower in a vacuum. I'm not sure what sort of child benefit policies South Korea has, but Canada has a similar level of education as South Korea, and has ~1.75x the birth rate.
6 * 7787 + 9 * 6570 + 145.83 * 12 * 18 = 137351.28 CAD (or 101,894.73 USD). That's almost a 4x difference from 388,000, which anyone would qualify as "far off". EDIT: Originally forgot to multiply...
6 * 7787 + 9 * 6570 + 145.83 * 12 * 18 = 137351.28 CAD (or 101,894.73 USD). That's almost a 4x difference from 388,000, which anyone would qualify as "far off".
EDIT: Originally forgot to multiply the 145.83 by 12 before again by 18, but fixed now.
That math is (still) wrong: 6 * 7787 + 11 * 6570 + 145.83 * 18 * 12 = $150,491.28 And keep in mind this is tax free money. I’m not sure it makes sense to convert to USD either — we buy things in...
And keep in mind this is tax free money. I’m not sure it makes sense to convert to USD either — we buy things in Canadian dollars, and exchange rates fluctuate.
And don’t forget that the other “pie in the sky” programs you OP laughed off like universal healthcare are also paid for here. Our college education is also dirt cheap compared to the US.
That’s $737.70/month for the first 17 years, not at all far from the $800/month originally mentioned, without going to far into the early retirement plan that was suggested, but I would also suggest that the cost of retiring early in Canada would be sharply less expensive due to the national health care program which is now going to include pharmacare (prescription drugs also paid for).
Heh, good catch, thanks for that. I think we should convert to USD since Tanya was talking about the American situation and considering the cost of the proposed policies in America. It wouldn't...
Heh, good catch, thanks for that.
I think we should convert to USD since Tanya was talking about the American situation and considering the cost of the proposed policies in America. It wouldn't make sense to say "It costs $X USD, but we're already spending $Y CAD".
Also, it wasn't me that laughed off universal healthcare; I just joined the conversation recently. I want to make that clear because I don't want to misrepresent any opinions Tanya holds.
Thanks. You summarized my feelings well. We as individuals have very little ability to affect the decisions our leaders make. Hell, even collectively, only the wealthiest 10% of the population has...
Thanks. You summarized my feelings well. We as individuals have very little ability to affect the decisions our leaders make. Hell, even collectively, only the wealthiest 10% of the population has any of their views really represented in politics. There is very, very little I can do as an individual to have any real effect. Sure, I could go vegan or get an electric car, but these only make have a small impact on or or two of the many ecological crises we face. Even if I live a modest and frugal lifestyle, as a citizen of the US, if I want to live as a member of this society, I have to have a large ecological footprint. Going vegan or or electric certain has some impact, but simply choosing not to have kids has an order of magnitude more impact on long-term environmental deterioration than any other thing an individual can do. I don't need to convince any bought and paid for politicians. I don't need to go full radical and throw my life away blowing up oil pipelines. I don't need to destroy my quality of life and try to recreate the lifestyle of Medieval peasant.
But I really push back against the idea that choosing to be child free entails no sacrifice. Not everyone who chooses to be child free does so because they don't want kids. My partner and I chose not to have biological kids. But in our case, we would have to use IVF and surrogacy. And we just can't justify devoting all those resources just to bring another person into the world who will live a first-world high footprint lifestyle. I worry about the ethics of bringing children into a world knowing what they will face. We would love to have bio kids of our own, but considering the cost and the world they'll face, it just makes no sense.
And choosing not to have children is not some sacrifice people make lightly. I grew up in a large family. I love kids. I would love to have some. But at the same time, I realize that if we are going to survive long term, many of us are going to have to choose not to have kids. And who better to choose to do that than those who would already have to rely on reproductive technology? What am I giving up by not having kids? Sure, I save some dollars, but I give up literally every single positive experience I would ever have with said children. I will not see my kids learn and grow. I will not see their first steps. I will not hear their first words or be able to teach them to read. I will not die knowing that my genetics will go on. I will not die like my grandfather did, with three generations of kids, grandkids, and great grandkids at his bedside.
That is what you give up by choosing not to have kids. It is not a minor sacrifice. And in fact, most parents will find that the sacrifices of having kids are worth all of these other benefits.
I'll grant that's a thing that can happen. But just because you choose to not have biokids doesn't mean you have to sacrifice love. You could seek that fulfillment by adopting one of the millions...
I'll grant that's a thing that can happen. But just because you choose to not have biokids doesn't mean you have to sacrifice love. You could seek that fulfillment by adopting one of the millions of other foster kids in need of loving parents as well.
And ultimately, there's no intrinsic reason to not have kids....having 1 or 2 is still going to lower population over time, regardless of what others are doing.
I've always seen the childfree arguement being made more as a way of justifying to oneself coping with perpetual financial instability, or a way of green virtue-signalling when the real answer almost always really is "I don't want kids." And I'll concede that's a bit overly judgemental on my part.
But part of the reason I say that is we don't need reduced consumption in 60 years, we need it today. Allowing the childless to consume greater than the childfree doesn't help the now.
I'm not going to write up a more detailed reply to the various economic stuff you and others posted in other chains to my reply, but I'll toss this out there:
Society has to be able to afford it. Because as things stand today, society still relies on untold unpaid domestic labor to insure that society continues to exist. It feeds into that patriarchal wage gap, because domestic labor is seen as not worth recieving a wage for.
If anything, that feeds into the reduction of consumption: Luxury funds are drained to fund the raising of the next generation. Related: Teachers need about a 100% pay increase. Not all of this taxation needs to go directly into parent coffers. Some will just insure properly paying people.
I did some volunteer work for LGBT seniors in various assisted or independent living situations. All were childless. Honestly, their being childless and elderly struck me as an utterly lonely and...
What am I giving up by not having kids? Sure, I save some dollars, but I give up literally every single positive experience I would ever have with said children. I will not see my kids learn and grow. I will not see their first steps. I will not hear their first words or be able to teach them to read. I will not die knowing that my genetics will go on. I will not die like my grandfather did, with three generations of kids, grandkids, and great grandkids at his bedside.
I did some volunteer work for LGBT seniors in various assisted or independent living situations. All were childless. Honestly, their being childless and elderly struck me as an utterly lonely and depressing existence. Friends often move on in life with their own partners and move to other cities and states and countries, as did these seniors'. So there I was: I was their sole phone call, chit chat, and helping hand. They were without the close network that a family often provides in the final chapter of their lives.
Maybe our culture will evolve and we will start considering certain friends as close as families and include them in our households, finances, life planning, etc.
Anyway, I agree, there are tremendous sacrifices. People think about childlessness in terms of having more free income and time. But they don't weigh enough what happens in the final third of their lives when their brunch/vacation couples friends move or drift away and it gets really hard to make organic social connections with non-related members of the younger generations.
I would also argue that it's a very human-centric viewpoint to view childfree humans as leeches as it completely ignores the environmental impact on the rest of the world. The info-graphic here...
so their children will be empathetic enough to not dump the leeching geezers in the ocean.
I almost wish they would do that to us, lol
I would also argue that it's a very human-centric viewpoint to view childfree humans as leeches as it completely ignores the environmental impact on the rest of the world.
The info-graphic here (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children) shows just how big of an impact not having a child is, especially in a western country, and the impact of saving forest from being cleared for food/paper/natural resources, saving waterways and tons of pollution, not to mention the exponential impact of not having those children who will consume resources, have their own children, which will consume resources...ad nauseam. All this has a material impact on the planet, the wild species we share it with, and the ones we breed and slaughter by the billions yearly to meet the food demand of the growing population.
From an entirely human-centrist economic perspective though, in most countries, whether childfree or not, most employees still pay into a pension scheme to cover the generation that came before us, and while we're not creating future citizens to pay for our retirement, we are leaving the door open for economic migrants to join the labour pool and pay into it in the next generation--all with a minimal environmental impact.
Yes, dark humour was very much the intent. I just came off watching Poor Things and yea infants/toddlers don't have much empathy, would not want them in adult body. My child just asked today if...
Yes, dark humour was very much the intent.
I just came off watching Poor Things and yea infants/toddlers don't have much empathy, would not want them in adult body.
My child just asked today if they could pull out mommy's eyeball. It's a tough job.
I read it the same way. I was agreeing with you, I just wanted to continue the discussion under your comment as I wasn't really starting a new train of thought but felt I was adding to that of the...
I read it the same way. I was agreeing with you, I just wanted to continue the discussion under your comment as I wasn't really starting a new train of thought but felt I was adding to that of the footprint reduction at the terminus of your family tree.
This was one of the factors in our decision not to have children. In addition to just not having the desire to have children, we didn't feel any obligation to society to reproduce either. There are more than enough people (both existing and on the way) that society will continue to function just fine without us creating additional humans.
One framing I have on this is to view it as a generational sacrifice for the betterment of the world and future generations. Long essay, got a bit carried away.
In an ideal world, we would have more elegant ways of controlling our environmental impact other than the brute force method of population control. But our current economic and political model, or really any post-industrial one we've ever had, has proven to be completely incapable of doing this. We currently, as a civilization, simply do not know how to run an industrialized society without huge per-capita environmental impact. In our current system, living even a modest standard of living in a developed country means having a massive ecological impact. Maybe we can come up with a better system that could allow us to live a decent standard of living while also not destroying the environment. But I have zero faith in us cracking that problem before the biosphere collapses entirely.
We know we're having an unsustainably large impact on the biosphere. Yes, greenhouse gases are likely the most imminently important one today, but there are many others. We can throw sulfur into the atmosphere to lower the planet's temp, but that won't save the oceans from acidification. We can cut carbon emissions, but that won't reverse the contamination of microplastics. You can completely ban fossil fuels, but soil erosion, habitat loss, aquifer depletion, and a hundred other environmental crises we're staring down the barrel of will remain.
And I mean "unsustainable" in a very literal sense. We're having an unsustainable impact on the planet because we are doing numerous things that we literally cannot do indefinitely. Inevitably, we will hit some hard limits that it will cause such vast ecological disaster that our own population will crater. We are chipping away at the ecological foundation keeping our species standing. If we do not reduce our impact, nature will reduce our impact for us. Maybe we'll just pile up so much plastic in the environment that half the people will die of lymphoma before age 12. Maybe global warming goes off the rails and 90% of the human population is poached alive in apocalyptic heatwaves. Maybe the vast majority of us just starve when farm yields plummet for any number of possible reasons. If we don't do something to pause and then reduce our impact on this planet, at some point we will run headfirst into a wall. I don't know whether that will come in 2040 or 2400, but it will happen. Indefinite growth is not possible in a finite universe. And we are well past a sustainable level right now.
We need to reduce our impact. In our current economic system, voluntarily choosing not to have kids is the single greatest thing a person can do to lower future ecological impacts. Nothing else comes close. And from a humanitarian perspective, is this not the ideal outcome? We know we're having too great an impact. We know we need to reduce our numbers. An author of dystopian sci fi in the 1970s might have projected that by now governments would have gone full dystopian and started harshly controlling population, China's One Child Policy mutated into a global birth licensing and control scheme. That's what they would have thought back then would be needed to reign in population growth.
But here we are, in the real 2024, and the population problem seems to just be solving itself. Unless you count economic coercion, no one is being denied the right to have a child. No one is being forcibly sterilized. Unlicensed or disabled children aren't being euthanized en masse and rendered into Soylent Green. The worst predictions of 1970s sci fi, which did often feature predictions of our present time, painted a pretty dark picture. This was an era when overpopulation, The Population Bomb, etc. were really part of the Zeitgeist. But these things simply didn't come to pass, and a dropping of birth rates is likely a major reason many of them didn't.
What now seems to be the case is that it's a pretty universal human experience that if you give women education, the ability to willingly access contraception, and the right to a work and and an independent existence, birth rates plummet. When women are treated like property, they're inevitably also treated like breeding stock. Giving women rights results in lower birth rates.
And rather than decry it, I think that's a good thing. Again, we do ultimately need to reduce our numbers. And what less painful way to do this could there possibly be than for us, as individuals or couples, to simply choose not to have kids? No dystopian police state. No mass famine death after an ecological collapse. Just a steady drop in our numbers until we're back at a sustainable level. Let the present age be remembered as "the fossil boom (n): a period from approximately 1800-2200, where global human population spiked from 1 to 10 billion over the course of two centuries, and then, miraculously, returned back to one billion peacefully over the next two centuries."
Is this a perfect solution? No. First, if all things were truly equal, I think having more people alive at once is a good thing in and of itself. Human population should ideally be set at whatever can be sustainably supported on Earth. And that number will vary with changes in technology. If new tech allows more people with the same footprint, then sure, go for more people. The more the merrier. To be alive is a beautiful miracle, and the more that can experience it, the better. We just need to make sure we can keep that number going into the far future.
Finally, the economic impacts can't be ignored. Those are the real immediate concern rather than esoteric concerns about the meaning of life and all that. And yes, if they have fewer children in their childbearing years, each generation that does that will have to pay for it in the form of a more expensive retirement. Retirees by definition live off the labor of those younger than them, in various degrees of obfuscation. On a personal level, foregoing children means you won't be having biological children to lean on in your retirement. On a national level, it means cuts to pension systems and reduced stock market returns. If your generation, (Millennials, Gen Z, Alpha, doesn't matter), has fewer children, you will likely have to work a few more years to be able to afford retirement. It is almost inevitable. (Assuming total ecological collapse doesn't occur before you reach retirement years.)
In short, by choosing to have fewer kids, we will have to pay the price for it later. But that is the key. WE will pay the price. Not our children or our children's children. No. WE will pay it. As a generation, we will still have kids, but we will simply have fewer than are needed to maintain our present numbers. Our collective children will live in whatever a capitalist version of a worker's paradise is. With a shrinking and greying population, the labor of the young is in absolutely tremendous demand. We're already seeing surging wages in many industries that were previously used to relying on cheap labor.
With a shrinking population, the NIMBYs have the last laugh. Rather than growing housing to meet demand, we'll instead shrink population to match the housing supply! Homes will give less of a return on investment, but they'll be easier to acquire. That sounds like a better world to me. The only people who will want to own homes are those who want to live in them. If only.
We, the current generation of child-bearing age, will pay the price in the form of a reduced standard of living in our golden years. But the children our generation does have will enjoy opportunities we ourselves could never dream of, and their chances of not driving full-speed into an ecological brick wall will hopefully decrease.
We have failed on so many fronts. We have completely failed to reign in our leaders, and our entire political and economic systems seem utterly incapable of avoiding even obviously apparent disaster. We have failed on so many fronts. Even the biggest headline issue, carbon emissions, just keep going up and up. We keep issuing oil leases in record numbers. There's talk of curtailing emissions, but at the same time, investment and approval to massively expand emissions just keeps rolling along. The machine can't be stopped.
But here is something we, as a generation, can do that will actually have a meaningful impact. We will pay a price, but future generations will be better for it. A generational sacrifice for the betterment of the world. I know this is certainly not such a clean story. There are other negatives to population reduction that I didn't get into, but I still believe that we do need to reduce our numbers, or eventually nature will likely reduce them for us. And I can think of no better way to do that than for people to simply voluntarily choose to have fewer kids. We pay the price, and our children and the world they inherit will be better for it.
So here's the thing. I agree with much of your post, particularily about women's rights and unsustainability.
But raising children is incredibly expensive. It's a huge economic drain that parents have that childless people do not. Even now, I see childfree adults splurging on high-end luxuries at double the rate that I do despite earning half what I do. Ostensibly that means I'm 'putting in' double the paid economic labor and unpaid domestic labor for lower overall consumption of non-essential goods.
So if the childless people will depend on the children of the people whom raised children, they need to accept a good bit of that economic burden. Otherwise, childbearing adults will be permanently economically disadvantaged, while the childfree adults will be free to consume and save at a higher rate...allowing them to potentially retire while forcing the people who raised the next workforce work until they die.
$400/month per child cared for under 18 should do it. Maybe more... 800/mo would level the economic scales a bit better. After that, the parents get to retire 10 years earlier than their peers, because they spent their 20s/30s/40s/50s working a second full-time job so their children will be empathetic enough to not dump the leeching geezers in the ocean.
Childfree people already subsidize those who have children. We pay more in taxes because we can't claim any deductions or child tax credits. We also pay a significant amount of our property taxes towards programs for children like schools and playgrounds, which we'll never take advantage of.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally fine with subsidizing these things. An educated populace is a good thing for everyone. And I also realize that these things don't completely cover the cost of having kids. But nobody is forcing you have children. That's a choice that you willingly make, knowing the expense involved. I don't support saddling others with the cost of your choices any more than I support corporate tax subsidies.
Yup, single and childfree people have always paid the vast majority of taxes (relatively) in comparison to benefits we get back from the system. Children are very expensive, but married people on average make much more money than single people (family bias in employers) and receive more tax credits.
In my opinion, this seems somewhat more antagonistic than is warranted. I won't speculate on why, I neither have children nor particularly want them and therefore lack that half of the context, but I will remark that seems to be a common view of those with children vis-a-vis the childless.
I do take a certain degree of umbrage at the notion of the childless elderly being leeches, however. It implies that there isn't some give for the take, and that simply isn't true, if for no other reason than the fact that they'll be paying for it out-of-pocket. The children will be paid to take care of people, childless or otherwise. Monetary compensation for taking care of someone is far from leeching. Presumably your children will take care of you for near-free in your old age (a reasonably common argument made by those with children, but I'm not trying to imply that's why you had children), so an argument can be made that the economic burden is still borne but at a different time in one's life.
As far as luxury purchases go, I would urge you to remember that a significant portion of those will have been made on credit, at least in the US. Keeping up with the Jones can be a significant debt trap.
So I know part of this is that I have plenty of money for myself (but no home ownership or fancy car). But I don't understand the worship of money and projection of wealth most Americans perform. It's so cheap to rethink your approach to life. Why go into debt for a Tesla when you could exchange your greed for humility? Maybe it's a lack of positive role models. Professionals who use their skills to maximize happiness and relaxation instead of their image.
Can’t speak for other parts of the world, but in the US I think it’s a result of how we tend to tie self-worth to and define ourselves by our occupation and compensation.
Projection of wealth is very old and something people have been doing probably since the development of society, but the importance placed in employment in the US turns it up to 11. Symbols of wealth are tied not only to money, but also to the idea that their owner is a hard worker working a respectable job that’s highly valued by society, which then implies that by not keeping up with the Joneses, one hasn’t worked as hard and/or is working a less respected or valued job, and is thus lesser.
Thinking about it, it probably also has a lot to do with the idea that a lot of people have on some level bought into that anything is possible in America if one works hard enough, which in reality is only tenuously true.
What you are saying has always been the case. There have always been people who have children and those who don't. Think of all those celibate monks and nuns in the Middle Ages, for one. We have a word for it that's been used for decades. Remember Mr. Dink? There have always been some people that choose or are unable to have kids.
Moreover, it gets really messy when you try to define who should give and receive compensation for the economic burden of raising children. I work as an educator for undergraduates. I'm going to spend my whole career teaching young people. Do I still have to pay these increased taxes to ease the economic burden of childcare? What about the people working at the childcare centers, who are paid little and probably can't afford kids of their own. Do they have to pay for these subsidies? Because if only half the population is have kids, and they're receiving $800/month, that means the other half is paying $800/month in additional taxes. What about the people working at the factory that makes the diapers for your kid? What about their school teachers? What about the people programming the apps on those tablets they spend all day one? And on and on.
This is one of the big problems with mass subsidization of child rearing. Plenty of countries with falling birth rates have gone down the route you're suggesting, heavily subsidizing parental leave, providing universal healthcare, free university education, etc. But they've all failed to move the needle on birth rates. And the reason is that being a parent is so much work that to really encourage people to do it would require more money than any country can afford to pay. You want $800/month for 18 years? I assume that's probably on top of universal healthcare, free college education, etc. And you want to retire 10 years earlier? The average social security benefit is about $1800/month. So in addition to the other government programs, you want $800/month for 18 years and $1800/month for 10 years. That's $388,000. And yes, that's is the kind of money we would need to throw around to really have an measurable impact on birth rates.
But again, if half the population is receiving on average about $400k in direct payment subsidies for their work raising children, then the other half has to pay $400k on average. That has to come out of the pockets of the people producing all the goods and services you as a parent rely upon. You're talking about a substantial portion of the total lifetime earnings of everyone who doesn't have a child.
And you think this would ever in a thousand lifetimes be politically possible...why? Half the population is not going to vote to drive itself into poverty to subsidize those who are fortunate enough to be able to have children. Do not assume that just because people choose not to have kids, that they would not enjoy having kids. I would very much like to do so. But as we would need to use IVF and surrogacy anyway, and combined that with the very real concerns about bringing children into this world right now, what kind of world they'll face, et. No, it just wasn't worth it. We'll look at adoption, but we're skipping having bio kids. And I imagine the same applies to many childfree couples.
I'm not going to vote to impoverish myself because we already are going to have to work longer to support ourselves completely in retirement. We won't at least any genetic kids to rely on. Your children will not be forced into involuntary labor, they will be paid, and paid better than our generation was paid.
Finally, do not discount the sacrifice of choosing not to have kids. After all, you yourself chose to have kids (assuming it was an active choice you made.) You knew the costs going in, and you decided that you would gain enough emotional satisfaction out of having children to make the cost and effort worthwhile. And if it's emotionally worth it for you to have kids, why would you assume the same doesn't apply to many childfree couples? The perspective I outlined in my essay was one of people who choose not to have kids at least in part out of concerns for the future of the world. To end the cycle of consumption and environmental deterioration and not pass it on.
I assume you love your children. I assume you love them very much. Imagine if someone asked you to sacrifice them for the good of the world. And then imagine you did that, and someone asked you to pay 400 grand even after you made that sacrifice.
You’re talking like this kind of income support for raising kids is inconceivable, but actually we aren’t far off in Canada.
Federal payment:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/campaigns/every-dollar-counts.html
Provincial payment:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-family-benefits/provincial-territorial-programs/province-british-columbia.html#2
edit:
(6 * 7787 + 11 * 6570 + 145.83 * 18 * 12) /(17*12)
That’s $737.70/month for the first 17 years, not at all far from the $800/month originally mentioned, without going too far into the early retirement plan that was suggested, but I would also suggest that the cost of retiring early in Canada would be sharply less expensive due to the national health care program which is now going to include pharmacare (prescription drugs also paid for).
I was replying specifically to the original comment, and I would agree that subsidies on the order of Canada's certainly are possible. Yet, Canada is still an illustrative example. Canada has universal healthcare and the generous child subsidies you described. But what has that done to actually increase the birth rate? Canada's birth rate is lower than that of the US.
Again, no country has succeeded at really cracking this problem. And I think it's because no country can afford to pay enough to really make a difference. I think you would have to do something similar to what vord suggested, subsidies so generous they're a sizable fraction of people's total lifetime income.
You're not comparing apples to apples though -- Canada is significantly more educated than the United States so we would expect its birth rate to be lower in a vacuum. I'm not sure what sort of child benefit policies South Korea has, but Canada has a similar level of education as South Korea, and has ~1.75x the birth rate.
6 * 7787 + 9 * 6570 + 145.83 * 12 * 18 = 137351.28 CAD (or 101,894.73 USD). That's almost a 4x difference from 388,000, which anyone would qualify as "far off".
EDIT: Originally forgot to multiply the 145.83 by 12 before again by 18, but fixed now.
EDIT 2: math is hard; see below for a correction.
That math is (still) wrong:
6 * 7787 + 11 * 6570 + 145.83 * 18 * 12 = $150,491.28
And keep in mind this is tax free money. I’m not sure it makes sense to convert to USD either — we buy things in Canadian dollars, and exchange rates fluctuate.
And don’t forget that the other “pie in the sky” programs
youOP laughed off like universal healthcare are also paid for here. Our college education is also dirt cheap compared to the US.(6 * 7787 + 11 * 6570 + 145.83 * 18 * 12) /(17*12)
That’s $737.70/month for the first 17 years, not at all far from the $800/month originally mentioned, without going to far into the early retirement plan that was suggested, but I would also suggest that the cost of retiring early in Canada would be sharply less expensive due to the national health care program which is now going to include pharmacare (prescription drugs also paid for).
Heh, good catch, thanks for that.
I think we should convert to USD since Tanya was talking about the American situation and considering the cost of the proposed policies in America. It wouldn't make sense to say "It costs $X USD, but we're already spending $Y CAD".
Also, it wasn't me that laughed off universal healthcare; I just joined the conversation recently. I want to make that clear because I don't want to misrepresent any opinions Tanya holds.
Oh hah, I totally mistook you for the other commenter.
Thanks. You summarized my feelings well. We as individuals have very little ability to affect the decisions our leaders make. Hell, even collectively, only the wealthiest 10% of the population has any of their views really represented in politics. There is very, very little I can do as an individual to have any real effect. Sure, I could go vegan or get an electric car, but these only make have a small impact on or or two of the many ecological crises we face. Even if I live a modest and frugal lifestyle, as a citizen of the US, if I want to live as a member of this society, I have to have a large ecological footprint. Going vegan or or electric certain has some impact, but simply choosing not to have kids has an order of magnitude more impact on long-term environmental deterioration than any other thing an individual can do. I don't need to convince any bought and paid for politicians. I don't need to go full radical and throw my life away blowing up oil pipelines. I don't need to destroy my quality of life and try to recreate the lifestyle of Medieval peasant.
But I really push back against the idea that choosing to be child free entails no sacrifice. Not everyone who chooses to be child free does so because they don't want kids. My partner and I chose not to have biological kids. But in our case, we would have to use IVF and surrogacy. And we just can't justify devoting all those resources just to bring another person into the world who will live a first-world high footprint lifestyle. I worry about the ethics of bringing children into a world knowing what they will face. We would love to have bio kids of our own, but considering the cost and the world they'll face, it just makes no sense.
And choosing not to have children is not some sacrifice people make lightly. I grew up in a large family. I love kids. I would love to have some. But at the same time, I realize that if we are going to survive long term, many of us are going to have to choose not to have kids. And who better to choose to do that than those who would already have to rely on reproductive technology? What am I giving up by not having kids? Sure, I save some dollars, but I give up literally every single positive experience I would ever have with said children. I will not see my kids learn and grow. I will not see their first steps. I will not hear their first words or be able to teach them to read. I will not die knowing that my genetics will go on. I will not die like my grandfather did, with three generations of kids, grandkids, and great grandkids at his bedside.
That is what you give up by choosing not to have kids. It is not a minor sacrifice. And in fact, most parents will find that the sacrifices of having kids are worth all of these other benefits.
I'll grant that's a thing that can happen. But just because you choose to not have biokids doesn't mean you have to sacrifice love. You could seek that fulfillment by adopting one of the millions of other foster kids in need of loving parents as well.
And ultimately, there's no intrinsic reason to not have kids....having 1 or 2 is still going to lower population over time, regardless of what others are doing.
I've always seen the childfree arguement being made more as a way of justifying to oneself coping with perpetual financial instability, or a way of green virtue-signalling when the real answer almost always really is "I don't want kids." And I'll concede that's a bit overly judgemental on my part.
But part of the reason I say that is we don't need reduced consumption in 60 years, we need it today. Allowing the childless to consume greater than the childfree doesn't help the now.
I'm not going to write up a more detailed reply to the various economic stuff you and others posted in other chains to my reply, but I'll toss this out there:
Society has to be able to afford it. Because as things stand today, society still relies on untold unpaid domestic labor to insure that society continues to exist. It feeds into that patriarchal wage gap, because domestic labor is seen as not worth recieving a wage for.
If anything, that feeds into the reduction of consumption: Luxury funds are drained to fund the raising of the next generation. Related: Teachers need about a 100% pay increase. Not all of this taxation needs to go directly into parent coffers. Some will just insure properly paying people.
I did some volunteer work for LGBT seniors in various assisted or independent living situations. All were childless. Honestly, their being childless and elderly struck me as an utterly lonely and depressing existence. Friends often move on in life with their own partners and move to other cities and states and countries, as did these seniors'. So there I was: I was their sole phone call, chit chat, and helping hand. They were without the close network that a family often provides in the final chapter of their lives.
Maybe our culture will evolve and we will start considering certain friends as close as families and include them in our households, finances, life planning, etc.
Anyway, I agree, there are tremendous sacrifices. People think about childlessness in terms of having more free income and time. But they don't weigh enough what happens in the final third of their lives when their brunch/vacation couples friends move or drift away and it gets really hard to make organic social connections with non-related members of the younger generations.
I would also argue that it's a very human-centric viewpoint to view childfree humans as leeches as it completely ignores the environmental impact on the rest of the world.
The info-graphic here (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children) shows just how big of an impact not having a child is, especially in a western country, and the impact of saving forest from being cleared for food/paper/natural resources, saving waterways and tons of pollution, not to mention the exponential impact of not having those children who will consume resources, have their own children, which will consume resources...ad nauseam. All this has a material impact on the planet, the wild species we share it with, and the ones we breed and slaughter by the billions yearly to meet the food demand of the growing population.
From an entirely human-centrist economic perspective though, in most countries, whether childfree or not, most employees still pay into a pension scheme to cover the generation that came before us, and while we're not creating future citizens to pay for our retirement, we are leaving the door open for economic migrants to join the labour pool and pay into it in the next generation--all with a minimal environmental impact.
Yes, dark humour was very much the intent.
I just came off watching Poor Things and yea infants/toddlers don't have much empathy, would not want them in adult body.
My child just asked today if they could pull out mommy's eyeball. It's a tough job.
I read it the same way. I was agreeing with you, I just wanted to continue the discussion under your comment as I wasn't really starting a new train of thought but felt I was adding to that of the footprint reduction at the terminus of your family tree.