Obviously I am a big fan of The New York Times' "The Ezra Klein Show," since I've linked to it before. I thought this episode was especially interesting because of the discussion of the...
Exemplary
Obviously I am a big fan of The New York Times' "The Ezra Klein Show," since I've linked to it before.
I thought this episode was especially interesting because of the discussion of the intersection between birthrates (really, fertility rates) and culture.
Here is the introduction from the episode:
So, for a long time, the population concern we’ve been used to hearing is that we are racing towards too many people too quickly. This was a Malthusian fear in the 18th century that more people would mean more starvation. This was and is the fear of many environmentalists today, that more people means more weight on the planet’s resources, more environmental damage.
But now there’s this other concern that has come to join it, that we are racing towards de-population — too few people too quickly. As countries get richer the world over, fertility rates plummet, plummet quickly. In countries like America, we’re now below replacement rate, the rate at which a population holds steady. You see that in China. You see that in India. In some countries like Japan and South Korea, they’re so far below replacement rate that their population is going to rapidly shrink generation by generation.
If you spend much time on today’s right or among the Silicon Valley VC class, you find the set of fears has become, for them, almost what the climate crisis is for the left. You hear about it constantly. For many, it feels apocalyptic. It is the overarching context in which everything else is playing out.
But even if you don’t quite know how to feel about it, and I don’t always know how to feel about it, it’s also just kind of strange. You wouldn’t necessarily think that societies would have so many fewer children as they become richer. Money makes life easier. Lower child mortality makes the heart rending grief of losing a child less likely. Being better able to provide for your children would maybe make it easier to have more of them. Many people believe a boisterous family is part of the vision of a full life.
But fertility rates, they keep falling and falling. And even in the places where that fall has turned into freefall, where the very fabric of the society is now in question, policy to turn it around is proving completely ineffectual. So, why? We’re going to do two episodes on this, but the first is going to be about the global big picture.
Jennifer Sciubba is a political scientist, a demographer, and the author of the book, “8 Billion and Counting.” I asked her on the show to guide me through what these population numbers actually tell us, what they say in different regions of the world, how they might play out, and what they reveal about what happens to societies as they get richer.
Here is a summary of the episode from Google Gemini.
This episode delves into the global phenomenon of declining fertility rates and its potential ramifications. While economic development, education, and urbanization are generally linked to lower birth rates, the podcast explores a range of social and cultural factors that further influence this trend.
Shifting Priorities and Realities:
Changing gender roles: Traditional expectations where women shoulder most childcare responsibilities discourage larger families, particularly for career-oriented women. More equitable sharing of childcare between partners could lead to higher fertility rates.
Intensified parenting: Modern parenting styles emphasize quality time and enrichment activities, which can be time-consuming and expensive. Social media often portrays a stressful side of parenting, potentially deterring some from having more children.
Individualism vs. Family: The rise of individualism and focus on personal fulfillment may lead some to prioritize careers or smaller families over traditional family structures.
Challenges and Considerations:
Lack of community support: Dual-income families often lack access to affordable childcare and support systems. This, coupled with fewer opportunities for unsupervised play among children, can make raising a large family more difficult.
Low-fertility infrastructure: Cities and businesses increasingly cater to preferences of childless adults or small families, creating a feedback loop where having children feels less supported.
Population aging: Declining fertility rates lead to older populations on average, which can strain social security systems and healthcare resources.
Beyond the Alarm:
The podcast argues against viewing declining fertility rates as apocalyptic. However, it highlights the potential consequences of this trend, including global power shifts and a decline in societal emphasis on supporting families.
Key Takeaway:
Social and cultural factors, including gender roles, parenting styles, and societal values, significantly influence fertility decisions. Policymakers seeking to address declining birth rates should consider these factors to develop policies that support families and create a more balanced environment for individuals and families to thrive.
Personally, I only have one child. And since she's in high school, I certainly don't plan on having another. When I was growing up, I always expect to have two kids (a boy and a girl, of course). I have a brother and a sister, and am especially close with my brother, so I definitely see the value of having siblings. But the reality was that my daughter was born when my wife and I were still in college, so we were rather financially strapped. More than anything, I would say that money was the thing that held us back from having more children. But who knows?
There were a lot of interesting things in the episode, so I don't want to just wholesale quote the entire transcript, but I thought this was especially interesting.
Japan and South Korea come up a few times as examples of societies where women in particular seem to have opted out from having families because of the gender inequalities.
JENNIFER SCIUBBA: [...] > Now, the extremes can tell us a little bit here. Throughout East Asia, which has a region with the lowest total fertility rate in the world, there is something in common. And I first learned of it when I was still an undergraduate, I think. And I actually think this is probably part of what set me into wanting to study this for the rest of my life. I studied Japan, and I remember trying to write this paper — this sounds so funny now. I think it was called like “Sex in Japan” was like my senior thesis.
And I remember learning about Japanese young women were basically being — they were being vilified, really, in the media for living this very individualistic life, rather than getting married to a man, settling down and having children. And I think now that I’ve matured in my scholarship and studied more about this, that was symbolic of an opting out.
And we see this opting out kind of running throughout East Asia. South Korea has something called the four no’s — no dating, no sex with men, no marriage, no childbirth. And so we see them have the lowest fertility rate in the world. It’s this idea that marriage is no longer required to have a good life. You can have a job. You can make money on your own. And in fact, it is not only no longer required, it might actually stifle your life because of gender relations within the household.
South Korea has paternity leave. So, there you go — state policy, right? Oh, you say there’s no maternity and paternity leave. Let’s give you that policy. But men do not take the paternity leave. And that’s the values and cultural norms there. So, those are very important in being this counter or a limit on state policies’ ability to affect change. So, there may be ways — this may be where research needs to go. How do you change culture if you want to through state policy?
On the flipside of that, though, as they discuss later, it's not just unique to these highly developed but very patriarchal societies. I'm almost hesitant to quote this part because there's a much greater context here in their conversation that, absent hearing it, will probably warp someone's understanding of the conversation. But I think it's a very interesting potential topic for discussion, so I wanted to highlight it.
EZRA KLEIN: I think a lot about this particular question because I’m so caught on it. Because on the one hand, I get the all joy, no fun theory here. And I don’t find it to be true exactly. I find there to be a lot of fun in it, but I’m also somebody with a pretty flexible job. I work a lot, but I have a fair amount of control over those hours. And I’m somebody with enough money to fill in some of the gaps that we need to fill in. So, we can go out occasionally, that kind of thing.
And the thing that keeps coming to mind for me is like this collision between two ideas. One is that maybe the way we’re doing it, it’s not that much fun. Maybe the amount of pressure we’re putting on ourselves — is my kid reading early enough, are we spending enough time together, are the weekends enriching enough — my whole weekend is planned around what might be good for my kids. It’s like playground, library, go and get a bagel, right? It’s just, it’s all kids all the time. It’s not my sense that that’s how it’s always been.
And then on the other hand, it’s not also my sense that it was always fun, that maybe it just wasn’t part of the choice structure the way we thought about our lives that everything was about how much fun it would be, how individually enriching it would be. So there is this kind of interesting question of, one, have we made it less fun than it should be? Have we made —
In a way, are we too pro-natal for society in a way that has made us low-fertility societies? Because now what it means to be pro-child is to treat your children so well you can’t imagine having more than two or three of them. And on the other side, that this question of making everything a choice about is it going to be fun for me, I mean, when you look back in human history, that’s always how we thought about things.
JENNIFER SCIUBBA: Yes, and we have some data on this. The one that always strikes me is that a working mother today spends more time with her child than a stay-at-home mom would have a few decades ago. We’re spending more time with our kids on average. So I absolutely think that’s the case. And I do think it matters.
This very indulgent sense that everything should maximize your pleasure, why? Why is that the case? And so, every moment as a parent is not the best in the world, but overall, I don’t know. I’ve not seen a study, like, are you sad you had your kids? I mean, probably somebody has done that. Do you wish you hadn’t had them? It’s very few people.
I don't want people to think that the host and guest are adamant that every person should have children, though, so I guess don't take quotes too much out of the overall context of the conversation.
Two things that I believe are factors that I didn’t see mentioned are opportunity cost and appetite for risk. For the first, raising a child is at minimum a 20-year affair and longer with...
Two things that I believe are factors that I didn’t see mentioned are opportunity cost and appetite for risk.
For the first, raising a child is at minimum a 20-year affair and longer with multiples. That’s a big chunk of time and resources that in the modern world people could be using to pursue a dizzying array of other things instead. Speaking personally, there are more things I want to do or become good at than I could reasonably fit into a single lifetime, which makes having kids a more difficult choice given the tradeoffs involved.
On risk, your average working class couple is simply taking on a significant chunk of it by raising a family. Many who are doing well childless will be walking on the edge after adding just one child to the equation, because raising kids is ever more expensive. Subsidies and benefits help here, but are not enough to materially change the situation.
Financial risk especially I think plays into the situation in East Asia. I’ve lived in Japan and visit fairly often and have found while a number of women there would prefer to stay at home and raise a family, it’s difficult for them to find men who are earning enough to comfortably support that situation thanks to depressed wages.
Seems to me that op wrote a lot of bullshit to simply distract from the entire concept that economic conditions due to rampant capitalism (mostly in decline) makes it an insane proposition to...
Seems to me that op wrote a lot of bullshit to simply distract from the entire concept that economic conditions due to rampant capitalism (mostly in decline) makes it an insane proposition to gamble on being able to afford a child AND raise it properly.
This is another one of those things that I can't believe that the Smart People class has so much trouble with. The culture and economy that we've set up in this country is antagonistic toward the...
This is another one of those things that I can't believe that the Smart People class has so much trouble with. The culture and economy that we've set up in this country is antagonistic toward the idea of having kids. So people don't have as many kids.
I’m curious if you’ve considered the viability in moving elsewhere to raise children. I also live in a very HCOL area with crazy childcare costs. I think I would absolutely need to move to a LCOL...
I’m curious if you’ve considered the viability in moving elsewhere to raise children. I also live in a very HCOL area with crazy childcare costs. I think I would absolutely need to move to a LCOL area and work remotely for at least a few years to make it work.
For my own friend circle (young milenials of +/- 30) it's a lot less about money and a lot more about the environment and the state of the world. I used to be the only person I knew who didn't...
For my own friend circle (young milenials of +/- 30) it's a lot less about money and a lot more about the environment and the state of the world.
I used to be the only person I knew who didn't want any kids, but now I'm honestly gobsmacked by how many of my friends changed their minds in the opposite direction - from wanting kids to either not wanting them at all, or only under ideal circumstances (e.g. bought house, good career, spouse with good career, not in far-right political environment).
Personally I never wanted kids because i just never wanted them, but my friends are people who DID want kids, but are choosing against it anyway.
I've found the same among the few of my friends who opted not to have kids. It wasn't so much about finances as it was about not wanting to bring a child into a screwed up world. My wife and I...
I've found the same among the few of my friends who opted not to have kids. It wasn't so much about finances as it was about not wanting to bring a child into a screwed up world. My wife and I have decided not to have children just because we don't want them. We can certainly afford it, but we feel no obligation to anyone to do it and just have no desire to have a parenting lifestyle.
I wonder how much is purely unhealthy environmental factors impacting fertility. It would be somewhat poetic if the declining fertility rates as nations develop industry have less to do with...
I wonder how much is purely unhealthy environmental factors impacting fertility. It would be somewhat poetic if the declining fertility rates as nations develop industry have less to do with improved quality of life and access to birth control and have more to do with being slowly poisoned and subjected to other environmental factors that decrease fertility.
We were not meant to spend 8 hours a day in a chair, or standing. But that's what a large percentage do now...pushing buttons and pulling levers instead of intense physical labor with proper rest in between.
Industrialization brings along a lot of pollution with it. Some is more apparent than others....we're starting to see (publicly) the dangers of PFAS, but we haven't exactly banned Teflon. How many other consequences are yet to be seen?
Over half the people I know had major fertility issues when trying to conceive. I don't know if it was like this when I was growing up, but it seems really weird the number of people I've met that have needed fertility interventions to have a child.
I think your're right that environmental factors play a part. Add in hormone disrupters in plastics and food additives, and so many things we don't know about yet but undoubtedly exist amongst the...
I think your're right that environmental factors play a part. Add in hormone disrupters in plastics and food additives, and so many things we don't know about yet but undoubtedly exist amongst the sea of molecules we've added to our environment that weren't present, or weren't in high concentrations, during any part of our evolution.
This process certainly works with dominant species in natural ecological environments. The concept is known as carrying capacity. As species population grows, lack if resources/toxicity grows,...
This process certainly works with dominant species in natural ecological environments. The concept is known as carrying capacity. As species population grows, lack if resources/toxicity grows, death and non reproduction occurs.
The most adaptive species gently approach the carrying capacity and form a hovering equilibrium.
The less adaptive species shoot past capacity, crash below, rebound, and oscillate over and under.
We've created a second, artificial world that does not obey the same laws of nature that we evolved in (IE: Food is defacto limitless, subject to logistics). Perhaps we can adapt easily within the...
We've created a second, artificial world that does not obey the same laws of nature that we evolved in (IE: Food is defacto limitless, subject to logistics).
Perhaps we can adapt easily within the natural world, but in our new rules of the artificial world, we do not as easily adapt. Which does kind of make sense when you think about complaints about changing UIs and things of that nature.
The mechanisms may vary, but I’m not sure the principle does. Even as food shortages diminish, toxicity increases. And there may be more at play than simple physical environmental factors.
The mechanisms may vary, but I’m not sure the principle does. Even as food shortages diminish, toxicity increases. And there may be more at play than simple physical environmental factors.
Not disagreeing, just expanding. Toxicity may well be one of those things, as well as the written law. The US Constitutional is substantially less flexible than following your food supply with the...
Not disagreeing, just expanding. Toxicity may well be one of those things, as well as the written law.
The US Constitutional is substantially less flexible than following your food supply with the weather.
Enforcing non-adaptation to a highly-adaptive species breeds resentment in a population feeling trapped. We've seen how perpetual stress can be passed on genetically. I'm betting there's something unexplored in this vein.
Good catch. I’ll be looking for your paper “epigenetic effects on fertility due to artificial stressors from unjust and arbitrary economic and political constraints”
Good catch. I’ll be looking for your paper “epigenetic effects on fertility due to artificial stressors from unjust and arbitrary economic and political constraints”
I've read a number of interviews with Dr. Shanna Swan, who emphasizes that man-made chemicals are a leading cause of the decline in sperm count and overall fertility. Her research points to...
I've read a number of interviews with Dr. Shanna Swan, who emphasizes that man-made chemicals are a leading cause of the decline in sperm count and overall fertility. Her research points to endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA and phthalates that are widely used in plastics, linings of food cans, and many other products. These chemicals mimic hormones and can disrupt normal sexual development and function. She wrote a book about it, Count Down, which delves into the topic. (I picked it up from my library and skimmed it.)
I've contacted my members of Congress about the topic but, based on seen responses I got, whoever (or whatever) read my message didn't "file it correctly" so I think it was just a waste of my time.
Comment box Scope: information/suggestion Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none Federal legislators generally represent too large a swath of people to be responsive to individuals, even...
Comment box
Scope: information/suggestion
Tone: neutral
Opinion: none
Sarcasm/humor: none
Federal legislators generally represent too large a swath of people to be responsive to individuals, even about important issues. They act on a statistical level, or at the urging of PACs (to some of which it can be worthwhile to donate, or through which it can be worthwhile to pressure representatives). Representatives respond to influence from community organizations more than individuals because those organizations represent voting blocs.
US states have a relatively significant amount of control over environmental regulations within their borders, so it would be at least equally worthwhile, and probably more productive, to focus on advocacy/engagement with state-level representatives. Not only do they represent fewer people (and therefore are more likely to personally engage with constituents), but they are generally less partisan and tend to consider issues like a normal person would. So "environment" isn't as much of a dirty word, and "the health of our children" is convincing.
Some local governments may have influence over certain environmental matters. For example, my city helped pressure the local oil refinery to shut down and has been working with a commercial real estate developer to rehabilitate the site. Some cities have also banned the use of certain plastics, though I am not sure how effective those bans are. In general, I find city-level engagement to be particularly productive because I can personally walk into a councilmember/alderperson's office and talk to them. Just last night an advocacy group I help out invited our district councilmember to a meeting on street safety. And because these people have connections in state government, they can get a lot done.
Repeated pressure on elected representatives is also more likely to result in change than one-time messages. While quite frustrating, it is useful to repeatedly contact representatives about the same issues if they have not yet been addressed; ideally specific and actionable ones that they have actual control over.
It seems that when you reach the following trifecta, birth rates begin to plummet: Women become more educated Agriculture becomes a small part of the economy Living standards rise Once you don’t...
It seems that when you reach the following trifecta, birth rates begin to plummet:
Women become more educated
Agriculture becomes a small part of the economy
Living standards rise
Once you don’t need children for insurance/help on the family plot, it makes a lot of sense why women don’t want to be baby factories. Pregnancy is physically and mentally challenging and years of your life are taken up by children. Ultimately, I don’t think there’s a way to “solve” this without extremely coercive and authoritarian measures. The population will eventually decline until it reaches a stable equilibrium. Maybe if artificial wombs become practical that changes, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about prenatal epigenetics and postnatal maternal bonding. The only other option I could see as being “feasible”, at least in a technical sense, is paying couples to fuck like rabbits full-time and have a lot of kids, but then you get into issues of women being awfully close to being state broodmares, questions of eugenics, and reinforced class divisions (would a new lower “breeding” class emerge that gives birth to 90% of children in society?).
The world is a shitty place. If I had a choice I wouldn't want to be born. I want a kid, but I don't think I should have one. Capitalism is pure misery and I am one of the lucky ones who has a job...
The world is a shitty place. If I had a choice I wouldn't want to be born.
I want a kid, but I don't think I should have one. Capitalism is pure misery and I am one of the lucky ones who has a job that needs less than 20h working hours per week.
But to have our own house we will have to pay monthly for more than 30 years. Public transportation is shitty so we need a car, which is expensive. Public health care is all over the place (Brazil) and while it's totally free, having a private health plan is a good idea.
You need to work and pay a ton of money just to stay alive. Fuck capitalists. They burn down the world in their boats and islands while we do most of the work and receive nothing but pennies. And we even say thank you.
What's interesting about this perspective to me, and it comes up in the podcast, too, is that as miserable as life under American capitalism can be, is it really worse than, say, subsistence...
What's interesting about this perspective to me, and it comes up in the podcast, too, is that as miserable as life under American capitalism can be, is it really worse than, say, subsistence farming in any pre-industrial society? And yet people still had plenty of kids back then.
Of course, some of that was simply down to a lack of family planning options. But still... It's strange and rather sad that we live in a society that is so affluent but so many people feel like it would be a bad decision to bring people into that world. It's a rather damning indictment of our culture, no matter how you look at it.
To steelman the joys of subsistence farming, while it was a very hard life, you knew what you were working for, without question. You grow food, feed family, barter surplus with neighbors, repeat....
To steelman the joys of subsistence farming, while it was a very hard life, you knew what you were working for, without question. You grow food, feed family, barter surplus with neighbors, repeat. In addition, you needed kids. High child mortality meant that many kids would died, and you needed all the helpers you can get on a farm/plot (even a five year old can do basic tasks). Plus, sex was one of the best (only?) forms of recreation, so naturally without contraception, it was easy to have kids.
It was also one with a huge amount of cultural weight and institutional knowledge. You knew how to farm because your parents had been farmers and your neighbors were farmers and you'd been part of...
It was also one with a huge amount of cultural weight and institutional knowledge. You knew how to farm because your parents had been farmers and your neighbors were farmers and you'd been part of the process since you could toddle between piles of produce and drop them into baskets. There was certainly a lot that wasn't known that we know now, but your place in the world and the set of challenges you were going to face were very, very clearly delineated.
I suspect that needing more farm hands and a sort of retirement plan was also an incentive for subsistence farmers to have children. But I'm just speculating. Especially considering what hard...
I suspect that needing more farm hands and a sort of retirement plan was also an incentive for subsistence farmers to have children. But I'm just speculating. Especially considering what hard labor does to the human body.
When I grew up, in a somewhat rural area, kids would go play outside, and we would be called in when it's time for dinner. I get the sense that it's not so true anymore?
When I grew up, in a somewhat rural area, kids would go play outside, and we would be called in when it's time for dinner. I get the sense that it's not so true anymore?
Hell no it's not like that anymore. Middle school teacher here. A lot of my students are constantly doing one of two things: Getting shuttled like crazy to highly-structured sports activities....
Hell no it's not like that anymore.
Middle school teacher here. A lot of my students are constantly doing one of two things:
Getting shuttled like crazy to highly-structured sports activities. Weekend hockey to compliment the weekday hockey, out-of-town cheerleading or dance competitions, etc.
Sitting on Tik Tok in their bedrooms. Some of the boys get online to play video games with each other I guess, but it's nothing like a LAN party or split screen with your friends.
I never thought I'd be that old timer yelling at clouds but man, my mom would beat us out of the house with a broom and insist that we do not bother her until at least lunch time. Or she would close the basement door so she couldn't hear the neighbor kids and my brothers yelling while we played Goldeneye..
I'm sure it still happens, but no it's not the norm.
I suspect this is part of the issue, but I would also point to the breakdown in community in general.
Back in the day, you could pretty reliably expect your parents, extended family, neighbors, and neighborhood teenagers to pitch in for childrearing and daycare duties. You take 4 of the neighborhood kids on Thursday, your neighbor has them over Friday, your mom watches your kids Saturday, and you give the neighbor kid's older sister $20 to watch the kid Sunday so you could clean the house. If your little Rusty was out and about doing something dumb, you could rely on old Mr. Fischer at the meat market to give you a call and let you know. People just watched out for each other more, at least in some ways, when I was a kid.
It takes a village and we don't have villages anymore. You're lucky if you know your neighbors.
Factor in how daycare is unaffordable, how college debt prevents kids, fears about climate change, economic uncertainty, the lessening of social and religious pressures, etc., and it's pretty easy to understand why people aren't having more kids. Wife and I are stopping at two and even the one we have now has been an immense increase in stress and difficulty. We are exhausted, broke, and working. We have no help raising him outside of what we pay for in daycare.
I assume everyone has different reasons but there are a lot of reasons to choose from.
I think this is true, but it's worth pointing out that it's a feedback loop. I don't think people are inherently less friendly today, it's just that the shared burden of kids is what creates...
It takes a village and we don't have villages anymore. You're lucky if you know your neighbors.
I think this is true, but it's worth pointing out that it's a feedback loop. I don't think people are inherently less friendly today, it's just that the shared burden of kids is what creates villages. We don't have villages today because less people are having kids.
I grew up on a small street with like ~25 houses on it. About half of them were families with kids and most of those were kids within a 6 year window of age. I live on a street of similar size today and there's three other families with kids and only one other family with kids in the same age range as my kids.
I'd say we don't have villages today because everyone needs to move constantly to find work. Job insecurity paired with high specialization means if you're seeking work, you've got to cast a wider...
I'd say we don't have villages today because everyone needs to move constantly to find work. Job insecurity paired with high specialization means if you're seeking work, you've got to cast a wider geographic net. And that's also driving urbanization because increased economic density lowers the need to cast that wide net. And higher density also makes it harder to meet and recognize a lot of people who do not live immediately next to you.
I moved to a town where the majority of the population is multi-generational within 5 miles. One of the key differentiating factors is this town has above-average generational wealth and family businesses. There are fewer international chains than average.
There's definitely 'in groups' and 'out groups,' and a lot of the aforementioned highly-structured problems remain. But we know a lot more people than we knew in any other town we lived.
The closest ice cream shop is a family owned business. We were their first customers, and they recognize and greet us every time we go in, because it's not being operated by a dozen rotating teenagers on summer vacation.
I don't think I've ever seen the same two people working at a Ben and Jerry's on any given week. I'm sure they do, but between rotating 4 hour shifts and staffing churn,it makes it much harder to recognize anybody opposed to 'the same 3/5 people running the shop every day.'
Yea, multi-generational towns are definitely a part of the missing village but the whole "you watch the neighbourhood kids for a bit today, I'll watch them tomorrow" just requires a density of...
Yea, multi-generational towns are definitely a part of the missing village but the whole "you watch the neighbourhood kids for a bit today, I'll watch them tomorrow" just requires a density of parents. I also live in a small town that's relatively stable and more conducive to raising kids but even here, where I feel there are more parents than average, there's just not enough young families for the effect @Wolf_359 talked about.
We're working on that for summertime. "Hey, open invitation. Drop your kids off at Camp Vord, we have a dirt pit, a slip and slide, water guns, and various outdoor games."
We're working on that for summertime. "Hey, open invitation. Drop your kids off at Camp Vord, we have a dirt pit, a slip and slide, water guns, and various outdoor games."
(Invitation to Camp Vord implies no liability for injuries regardless of source; parents accept all past, present or future liability for the actions of their children, regardless of the parent's...
(Invitation to Camp Vord implies no liability for injuries regardless of source; parents accept all past, present or future liability for the actions of their children, regardless of the parent's presence.)
That's what the Umbrella Insurance Coverage is for. Next year we'll introduce pocketknives and fire! Actually my one child is ~7 and knows how to make fire with a magnifying glass, so fire is...
That's what the Umbrella Insurance Coverage is for.
Next year we'll introduce pocketknives and fire! Actually my one child is ~7 and knows how to make fire with a magnifying glass, so fire is already potentially on the table.
Indoor activities include hot glue guns, guillotine paper cutters, free reign of the toaster oven and microwave.
And the key is, they're not fully unsupervised, just somewhat. Especially if there is water that is more than an inch or so deep. Allowing them to play with garden sheers teaches valuable lessons...
And the key is, they're not fully unsupervised, just somewhat. Especially if there is water that is more than an inch or so deep.
Allowing them to play with garden sheers teaches valuable lessons in natural consequences.
One reason that surprisingly nobody has mentioned yet, is that we live in a car-centric hellscape. It's part of a push/pull with the internet: car-centrism makes it hard to go outside to meet with...
One reason that surprisingly nobody has mentioned yet, is that we live in a car-centric hellscape. It's part of a push/pull with the internet: car-centrism makes it hard to go outside to meet with friends, and the internet makes it easy to not go outside to meet with friends (since you can "meet" online).
Context matters here. Let’s not be too city-centric. Living on a country road, you can be entirely car-centric with near-zero traffic. There’s either zero or one moving car on the road. Other than...
Context matters here. Let’s not be too city-centric.
Living on a country road, you can be entirely car-centric with near-zero traffic. There’s either zero or one moving car on the road. Other than for a party, there’s never a parking problem either, since everyone has space in their driveway. (Shopping is different, since stores have big parking lots and there’s a lot of traffic there, but that’s not everywhere.)
As for friends, we had cousins on the same road and we would sometimes ride bikes to get together. My cousins across the road would have bike races on a small track they made. The hills discouraged going much further. We mostly saw friends in school. A lot of the time, I just played with my brother.
Kids who were into sports would stay later after school and take the late school bus home. I guess you could say we had transit, but it was the school bus system.
The Internet was not a thing yet. As a teenager, since I was into computers, I would call local BBSes and couldn’t tie up the phone for too long. The kids in school didn’t do that, though. I’m sure I would have spent much more time online if we had then what we have now. Instead, my brother and I played a lot of video games.
So maybe this would be a reason to fill up the kids’ schedule with activities, but my Mom just… didn’t do it that much? I had a weekly piano lesson. In the summer she would often drive us to a park where we could go swimming.
After school there would typically be nothing scheduled, other than dinner. I read and watched a lot of bad TV.
It takes generations to kill this stuff though. I'd wager it's TV worse than cars though...TV takes 20+ hours a week that would have been socializing. My great-grandparents didn't grow up with...
It takes generations to kill this stuff though. I'd wager it's TV worse than cars though...TV takes 20+ hours a week that would have been socializing.
My great-grandparents didn't grow up with either, organic community friendships. Grandparents didn't have TV, organic community friendships, but slightly less. Parents had both, witnessed what existing friendships were like, but never developed as many of their own when moving.
But I'm the first generation that was experiencing the 'before times' completely second-hand. The remanents of community was my family attending church, with bunch of people that otherwise we never spoke to, and their once-monthly card club.
Like....under 6 kids I can understand, especially if in an open yard in a dense area. But like, an 8 year old? That's somewhat absurd. My wife was walking to school alone in Philadelphia from the...
Like....under 6 kids I can understand, especially if in an open yard in a dense area.
But like, an 8 year old? That's somewhat absurd. My wife was walking to school alone in Philadelphia from the ripe old age of 7 in the 90's. In a relatively high-crime area. And nobody in any of her classes died or went missing.
Remember: Your mother-in-law (or other trusted adult) is more likely to kidnap your kids than some random person your kid never met.
I bet the increased frequency of moving about the country is a large contributor to this. People get to know their neighbors less the more dense they're packed, outside of special circumstances of...
People just watched out for each other more, at least in some ways, when I was a kid.
I bet the increased frequency of moving about the country is a large contributor to this. People get to know their neighbors less the more dense they're packed, outside of special circumstances of dorm life, military barracks, and monasteries.
I work for the post office. You would not believe how many suburbanite parents hang around at the bus stop, all in their cars, partially because they themselves don't want to walk to the stop, and...
I work for the post office.
You would not believe how many suburbanite parents hang around at the bus stop, all in their cars, partially because they themselves don't want to walk to the stop, and so their child doesn't have to walk the street-and-a-half distance. I see only one or two parents hanging around, not in a car, walking back with their children.
I'll also see about three or four kids total out on bikes. Idk any exact number, but I'd roughly estimate about 20 kids or various ages in the neighborhood.
Now with all that being said, I should my experiences are limited to three bus stops in the same neighborhood, and are purely anecdotal. That being said, it doesn't take a PhD to realize that nothing about this is healthy or sustainable.
They talk about that in the episode, too. And how helicopter parenting (though they don't call it that) makes raising children even more demanding, which is yet another reason fertility rates are...
They talk about that in the episode, too. And how helicopter parenting (though they don't call it that) makes raising children even more demanding, which is yet another reason fertility rates are down.
Annecdotal comment - My own two cents as a 26 year old guy in the UK, on an above average wage. Feel free to mark as noise. I was in a relationship where we agreed kids were not ideal because of...
Annecdotal comment - My own two cents as a 26 year old guy in the UK, on an above average wage. Feel free to mark as noise.
I was in a relationship where we agreed kids were not ideal because of the chance of disabilities. Whilst not in that relationship anymore, the cost of childcare for a disabled child is unfathomable, as well as the required time and effort. As my partner was disabled, we couldnt afford the time to look after her AND a child.
Additionally, I work for an industry that has the potential to do a lot of good and make a lot of positive change, yet the only projects that get funding are related to military applications or from industries that have already contributed to pain and suffering to humans through deceit, and that just doesn't sit right with me anymore... I'd feel terrible funding another life off the back of direct death and destruction, so whilst I'm glad my company has an anti-war stance, I can see the writing on the wall that the department might not be about for long.
As a final point, I'd also feel terrible about bringing a child into the world and throwing them into the meat grinder that is daily life. I can't see it getting much better as time goes on, only the chasm between wealth and poverty increasing.
So I opted for sterilisation and went under the knife last Christmas, and since then I've been nothing but emboldened in my decision. People in the office quietly talk about worrying for their kids future, the news presents more and more depressing correspondence (I actively avoid engaging with the news, but keep abreast of world events through Tildes and glancing over the articles posted) and more and more people look to alternatives to the reality thats in front of them, from drugs and alcohol, to meditation and religion. It's startling just how much discontent in existence (and on the other hand ignorance too) there is on a day to day.
One of the most obvious questions i got was "what if you change your mind or meet someone who wants kids?" And my response is "so we compromise and adopt? We don't add to the pile, strain resources more than they already are, and we give a loving home to someone that's unlikely to get it from their birth parents for whatever reason that may be?"
Edit: I don't want my comment "quietly emboldened" to come across as holier than thou. I believe everyone is free to make their own decisions, based on their own judgement, but recently its been alarming to see people reacting and becoming aware of what's going on around us yet still thinking "let's bring another person in to experience this". It doesn't make sense to me as an individual, hence I went the route I did.
I will make time to read this article. It is good news, but I find it hard to believe, especially with what the NYT has been doing to it's credibility lately. I hope I am wrong.
I will make time to read this article.
It is good news, but I find it hard to believe, especially with what the NYT has been doing to it's credibility lately.
Obviously I am a big fan of The New York Times' "The Ezra Klein Show," since I've linked to it before.
I thought this episode was especially interesting because of the discussion of the intersection between birthrates (really, fertility rates) and culture.
Here is the introduction from the episode:
You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app (iOS only, for some dumb reason), Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Sadly, these links don't point directly to the episode, I don't think, but I took it from the Times' website.)
Here is a summary of the episode from Google Gemini.
Personally, I only have one child. And since she's in high school, I certainly don't plan on having another. When I was growing up, I always expect to have two kids (a boy and a girl, of course). I have a brother and a sister, and am especially close with my brother, so I definitely see the value of having siblings. But the reality was that my daughter was born when my wife and I were still in college, so we were rather financially strapped. More than anything, I would say that money was the thing that held us back from having more children. But who knows?
There were a lot of interesting things in the episode, so I don't want to just wholesale quote the entire transcript, but I thought this was especially interesting.
Japan and South Korea come up a few times as examples of societies where women in particular seem to have opted out from having families because of the gender inequalities.
On the flipside of that, though, as they discuss later, it's not just unique to these highly developed but very patriarchal societies. I'm almost hesitant to quote this part because there's a much greater context here in their conversation that, absent hearing it, will probably warp someone's understanding of the conversation. But I think it's a very interesting potential topic for discussion, so I wanted to highlight it.
I don't want people to think that the host and guest are adamant that every person should have children, though, so I guess don't take quotes too much out of the overall context of the conversation.
Two things that I believe are factors that I didn’t see mentioned are opportunity cost and appetite for risk.
For the first, raising a child is at minimum a 20-year affair and longer with multiples. That’s a big chunk of time and resources that in the modern world people could be using to pursue a dizzying array of other things instead. Speaking personally, there are more things I want to do or become good at than I could reasonably fit into a single lifetime, which makes having kids a more difficult choice given the tradeoffs involved.
On risk, your average working class couple is simply taking on a significant chunk of it by raising a family. Many who are doing well childless will be walking on the edge after adding just one child to the equation, because raising kids is ever more expensive. Subsidies and benefits help here, but are not enough to materially change the situation.
Financial risk especially I think plays into the situation in East Asia. I’ve lived in Japan and visit fairly often and have found while a number of women there would prefer to stay at home and raise a family, it’s difficult for them to find men who are earning enough to comfortably support that situation thanks to depressed wages.
Seems to me that op wrote a lot of bullshit to simply distract from the entire concept that economic conditions due to rampant capitalism (mostly in decline) makes it an insane proposition to gamble on being able to afford a child AND raise it properly.
This is another one of those things that I can't believe that the Smart People class has so much trouble with. The culture and economy that we've set up in this country is antagonistic toward the idea of having kids. So people don't have as many kids.
I’m curious if you’ve considered the viability in moving elsewhere to raise children. I also live in a very HCOL area with crazy childcare costs. I think I would absolutely need to move to a LCOL area and work remotely for at least a few years to make it work.
People more worried about finances and how to survive than having kids. More expensive to live everywhere.
For my own friend circle (young milenials of +/- 30) it's a lot less about money and a lot more about the environment and the state of the world.
I used to be the only person I knew who didn't want any kids, but now I'm honestly gobsmacked by how many of my friends changed their minds in the opposite direction - from wanting kids to either not wanting them at all, or only under ideal circumstances (e.g. bought house, good career, spouse with good career, not in far-right political environment).
Personally I never wanted kids because i just never wanted them, but my friends are people who DID want kids, but are choosing against it anyway.
I've found the same among the few of my friends who opted not to have kids. It wasn't so much about finances as it was about not wanting to bring a child into a screwed up world. My wife and I have decided not to have children just because we don't want them. We can certainly afford it, but we feel no obligation to anyone to do it and just have no desire to have a parenting lifestyle.
I wonder how much is purely unhealthy environmental factors impacting fertility. It would be somewhat poetic if the declining fertility rates as nations develop industry have less to do with improved quality of life and access to birth control and have more to do with being slowly poisoned and subjected to other environmental factors that decrease fertility.
We were not meant to spend 8 hours a day in a chair, or standing. But that's what a large percentage do now...pushing buttons and pulling levers instead of intense physical labor with proper rest in between.
Industrialization brings along a lot of pollution with it. Some is more apparent than others....we're starting to see (publicly) the dangers of PFAS, but we haven't exactly banned Teflon. How many other consequences are yet to be seen?
Over half the people I know had major fertility issues when trying to conceive. I don't know if it was like this when I was growing up, but it seems really weird the number of people I've met that have needed fertility interventions to have a child.
I think your're right that environmental factors play a part. Add in hormone disrupters in plastics and food additives, and so many things we don't know about yet but undoubtedly exist amongst the sea of molecules we've added to our environment that weren't present, or weren't in high concentrations, during any part of our evolution.
This process certainly works with dominant species in natural ecological environments. The concept is known as carrying capacity. As species population grows, lack if resources/toxicity grows, death and non reproduction occurs.
The most adaptive species gently approach the carrying capacity and form a hovering equilibrium.
The less adaptive species shoot past capacity, crash below, rebound, and oscillate over and under.
We've created a second, artificial world that does not obey the same laws of nature that we evolved in (IE: Food is defacto limitless, subject to logistics).
Perhaps we can adapt easily within the natural world, but in our new rules of the artificial world, we do not as easily adapt. Which does kind of make sense when you think about complaints about changing UIs and things of that nature.
The mechanisms may vary, but I’m not sure the principle does. Even as food shortages diminish, toxicity increases. And there may be more at play than simple physical environmental factors.
Not disagreeing, just expanding. Toxicity may well be one of those things, as well as the written law.
The US Constitutional is substantially less flexible than following your food supply with the weather.
Enforcing non-adaptation to a highly-adaptive species breeds resentment in a population feeling trapped. We've seen how perpetual stress can be passed on genetically. I'm betting there's something unexplored in this vein.
Good catch. I’ll be looking for your paper “epigenetic effects on fertility due to artificial stressors from unjust and arbitrary economic and political constraints”
I've read a number of interviews with Dr. Shanna Swan, who emphasizes that man-made chemicals are a leading cause of the decline in sperm count and overall fertility. Her research points to endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA and phthalates that are widely used in plastics, linings of food cans, and many other products. These chemicals mimic hormones and can disrupt normal sexual development and function. She wrote a book about it, Count Down, which delves into the topic. (I picked it up from my library and skimmed it.)
I've contacted my members of Congress about the topic but, based on seen responses I got, whoever (or whatever) read my message didn't "file it correctly" so I think it was just a waste of my time.
Comment box
Federal legislators generally represent too large a swath of people to be responsive to individuals, even about important issues. They act on a statistical level, or at the urging of PACs (to some of which it can be worthwhile to donate, or through which it can be worthwhile to pressure representatives). Representatives respond to influence from community organizations more than individuals because those organizations represent voting blocs.
US states have a relatively significant amount of control over environmental regulations within their borders, so it would be at least equally worthwhile, and probably more productive, to focus on advocacy/engagement with state-level representatives. Not only do they represent fewer people (and therefore are more likely to personally engage with constituents), but they are generally less partisan and tend to consider issues like a normal person would. So "environment" isn't as much of a dirty word, and "the health of our children" is convincing.
Some local governments may have influence over certain environmental matters. For example, my city helped pressure the local oil refinery to shut down and has been working with a commercial real estate developer to rehabilitate the site. Some cities have also banned the use of certain plastics, though I am not sure how effective those bans are. In general, I find city-level engagement to be particularly productive because I can personally walk into a councilmember/alderperson's office and talk to them. Just last night an advocacy group I help out invited our district councilmember to a meeting on street safety. And because these people have connections in state government, they can get a lot done.
Repeated pressure on elected representatives is also more likely to result in change than one-time messages. While quite frustrating, it is useful to repeatedly contact representatives about the same issues if they have not yet been addressed; ideally specific and actionable ones that they have actual control over.
It seems that when you reach the following trifecta, birth rates begin to plummet:
Once you don’t need children for insurance/help on the family plot, it makes a lot of sense why women don’t want to be baby factories. Pregnancy is physically and mentally challenging and years of your life are taken up by children. Ultimately, I don’t think there’s a way to “solve” this without extremely coercive and authoritarian measures. The population will eventually decline until it reaches a stable equilibrium. Maybe if artificial wombs become practical that changes, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about prenatal epigenetics and postnatal maternal bonding. The only other option I could see as being “feasible”, at least in a technical sense, is paying couples to fuck like rabbits full-time and have a lot of kids, but then you get into issues of women being awfully close to being state broodmares, questions of eugenics, and reinforced class divisions (would a new lower “breeding” class emerge that gives birth to 90% of children in society?).
Breeding class... have you heard of welfare babies?
The world is a shitty place. If I had a choice I wouldn't want to be born.
I want a kid, but I don't think I should have one. Capitalism is pure misery and I am one of the lucky ones who has a job that needs less than 20h working hours per week.
But to have our own house we will have to pay monthly for more than 30 years. Public transportation is shitty so we need a car, which is expensive. Public health care is all over the place (Brazil) and while it's totally free, having a private health plan is a good idea.
You need to work and pay a ton of money just to stay alive. Fuck capitalists. They burn down the world in their boats and islands while we do most of the work and receive nothing but pennies. And we even say thank you.
I still want one child, but I shouldn't.
What's interesting about this perspective to me, and it comes up in the podcast, too, is that as miserable as life under American capitalism can be, is it really worse than, say, subsistence farming in any pre-industrial society? And yet people still had plenty of kids back then.
Of course, some of that was simply down to a lack of family planning options. But still... It's strange and rather sad that we live in a society that is so affluent but so many people feel like it would be a bad decision to bring people into that world. It's a rather damning indictment of our culture, no matter how you look at it.
To steelman the joys of subsistence farming, while it was a very hard life, you knew what you were working for, without question. You grow food, feed family, barter surplus with neighbors, repeat. In addition, you needed kids. High child mortality meant that many kids would died, and you needed all the helpers you can get on a farm/plot (even a five year old can do basic tasks). Plus, sex was one of the best (only?) forms of recreation, so naturally without contraception, it was easy to have kids.
It was also one with a huge amount of cultural weight and institutional knowledge. You knew how to farm because your parents had been farmers and your neighbors were farmers and you'd been part of the process since you could toddle between piles of produce and drop them into baskets. There was certainly a lot that wasn't known that we know now, but your place in the world and the set of challenges you were going to face were very, very clearly delineated.
I suspect that needing more farm hands and a sort of retirement plan was also an incentive for subsistence farmers to have children. But I'm just speculating. Especially considering what hard labor does to the human body.
When I grew up, in a somewhat rural area, kids would go play outside, and we would be called in when it's time for dinner. I get the sense that it's not so true anymore?
Hell no it's not like that anymore.
Middle school teacher here. A lot of my students are constantly doing one of two things:
Getting shuttled like crazy to highly-structured sports activities. Weekend hockey to compliment the weekday hockey, out-of-town cheerleading or dance competitions, etc.
Sitting on Tik Tok in their bedrooms. Some of the boys get online to play video games with each other I guess, but it's nothing like a LAN party or split screen with your friends.
I never thought I'd be that old timer yelling at clouds but man, my mom would beat us out of the house with a broom and insist that we do not bother her until at least lunch time. Or she would close the basement door so she couldn't hear the neighbor kids and my brothers yelling while we played Goldeneye..
I'm sure it still happens, but no it's not the norm.
I suspect this is part of the issue, but I would also point to the breakdown in community in general.
Back in the day, you could pretty reliably expect your parents, extended family, neighbors, and neighborhood teenagers to pitch in for childrearing and daycare duties. You take 4 of the neighborhood kids on Thursday, your neighbor has them over Friday, your mom watches your kids Saturday, and you give the neighbor kid's older sister $20 to watch the kid Sunday so you could clean the house. If your little Rusty was out and about doing something dumb, you could rely on old Mr. Fischer at the meat market to give you a call and let you know. People just watched out for each other more, at least in some ways, when I was a kid.
It takes a village and we don't have villages anymore. You're lucky if you know your neighbors.
Factor in how daycare is unaffordable, how college debt prevents kids, fears about climate change, economic uncertainty, the lessening of social and religious pressures, etc., and it's pretty easy to understand why people aren't having more kids. Wife and I are stopping at two and even the one we have now has been an immense increase in stress and difficulty. We are exhausted, broke, and working. We have no help raising him outside of what we pay for in daycare.
I assume everyone has different reasons but there are a lot of reasons to choose from.
There is also less tolerance of children just playing in the neighborhood and fewer third spaces to go and play at.
I think this is true, but it's worth pointing out that it's a feedback loop. I don't think people are inherently less friendly today, it's just that the shared burden of kids is what creates villages. We don't have villages today because less people are having kids.
I grew up on a small street with like ~25 houses on it. About half of them were families with kids and most of those were kids within a 6 year window of age. I live on a street of similar size today and there's three other families with kids and only one other family with kids in the same age range as my kids.
I'd say we don't have villages today because everyone needs to move constantly to find work. Job insecurity paired with high specialization means if you're seeking work, you've got to cast a wider geographic net. And that's also driving urbanization because increased economic density lowers the need to cast that wide net. And higher density also makes it harder to meet and recognize a lot of people who do not live immediately next to you.
I moved to a town where the majority of the population is multi-generational within 5 miles. One of the key differentiating factors is this town has above-average generational wealth and family businesses. There are fewer international chains than average.
There's definitely 'in groups' and 'out groups,' and a lot of the aforementioned highly-structured problems remain. But we know a lot more people than we knew in any other town we lived.
The closest ice cream shop is a family owned business. We were their first customers, and they recognize and greet us every time we go in, because it's not being operated by a dozen rotating teenagers on summer vacation.
I don't think I've ever seen the same two people working at a Ben and Jerry's on any given week. I'm sure they do, but between rotating 4 hour shifts and staffing churn,it makes it much harder to recognize anybody opposed to 'the same 3/5 people running the shop every day.'
Yea, multi-generational towns are definitely a part of the missing village but the whole "you watch the neighbourhood kids for a bit today, I'll watch them tomorrow" just requires a density of parents. I also live in a small town that's relatively stable and more conducive to raising kids but even here, where I feel there are more parents than average, there's just not enough young families for the effect @Wolf_359 talked about.
We're working on that for summertime. "Hey, open invitation. Drop your kids off at Camp Vord, we have a dirt pit, a slip and slide, water guns, and various outdoor games."
(Invitation to Camp Vord implies no liability for injuries regardless of source; parents accept all past, present or future liability for the actions of their children, regardless of the parent's presence.)
That's what the Umbrella Insurance Coverage is for.
Next year we'll introduce pocketknives and fire! Actually my one child is ~7 and knows how to make fire with a magnifying glass, so fire is already potentially on the table.
Indoor activities include hot glue guns, guillotine paper cutters, free reign of the toaster oven and microwave.
That sounds amazing!
And the key is, they're not fully unsupervised, just somewhat. Especially if there is water that is more than an inch or so deep.
Allowing them to play with garden sheers teaches valuable lessons in natural consequences.
One reason that surprisingly nobody has mentioned yet, is that we live in a car-centric hellscape. It's part of a push/pull with the internet: car-centrism makes it hard to go outside to meet with friends, and the internet makes it easy to not go outside to meet with friends (since you can "meet" online).
Context matters here. Let’s not be too city-centric.
Living on a country road, you can be entirely car-centric with near-zero traffic. There’s either zero or one moving car on the road. Other than for a party, there’s never a parking problem either, since everyone has space in their driveway. (Shopping is different, since stores have big parking lots and there’s a lot of traffic there, but that’s not everywhere.)
As for friends, we had cousins on the same road and we would sometimes ride bikes to get together. My cousins across the road would have bike races on a small track they made. The hills discouraged going much further. We mostly saw friends in school. A lot of the time, I just played with my brother.
Kids who were into sports would stay later after school and take the late school bus home. I guess you could say we had transit, but it was the school bus system.
The Internet was not a thing yet. As a teenager, since I was into computers, I would call local BBSes and couldn’t tie up the phone for too long. The kids in school didn’t do that, though. I’m sure I would have spent much more time online if we had then what we have now. Instead, my brother and I played a lot of video games.
So maybe this would be a reason to fill up the kids’ schedule with activities, but my Mom just… didn’t do it that much? I had a weekly piano lesson. In the summer she would often drive us to a park where we could go swimming.
After school there would typically be nothing scheduled, other than dinner. I read and watched a lot of bad TV.
That was true when fertility rates were higher 40+ years ago. So I don't think it's a major factor.
It takes generations to kill this stuff though. I'd wager it's TV worse than cars though...TV takes 20+ hours a week that would have been socializing.
My great-grandparents didn't grow up with either, organic community friendships. Grandparents didn't have TV, organic community friendships, but slightly less. Parents had both, witnessed what existing friendships were like, but never developed as many of their own when moving.
But I'm the first generation that was experiencing the 'before times' completely second-hand. The remanents of community was my family attending church, with bunch of people that otherwise we never spoke to, and their once-monthly card club.
In nc at least, the legal system will consider it neglect or abuse to let kids play outside unsupervised. It’s a tragedy.
Like....under 6 kids I can understand, especially if in an open yard in a dense area.
But like, an 8 year old? That's somewhat absurd. My wife was walking to school alone in Philadelphia from the ripe old age of 7 in the 90's. In a relatively high-crime area. And nobody in any of her classes died or went missing.
Remember: Your mother-in-law (or other trusted adult) is more likely to kidnap your kids than some random person your kid never met.
I bet the increased frequency of moving about the country is a large contributor to this. People get to know their neighbors less the more dense they're packed, outside of special circumstances of dorm life, military barracks, and monasteries.
It's really eerie driving around towns in the summertime and seeing maybe 10 people when you've driven past 500 homes.
I work for the post office.
You would not believe how many suburbanite parents hang around at the bus stop, all in their cars, partially because they themselves don't want to walk to the stop, and so their child doesn't have to walk the street-and-a-half distance. I see only one or two parents hanging around, not in a car, walking back with their children.
I'll also see about three or four kids total out on bikes. Idk any exact number, but I'd roughly estimate about 20 kids or various ages in the neighborhood.
Now with all that being said, I should my experiences are limited to three bus stops in the same neighborhood, and are purely anecdotal. That being said, it doesn't take a PhD to realize that nothing about this is healthy or sustainable.
They talk about that in the episode, too. And how helicopter parenting (though they don't call it that) makes raising children even more demanding, which is yet another reason fertility rates are down.
Annecdotal comment - My own two cents as a 26 year old guy in the UK, on an above average wage. Feel free to mark as noise.
I was in a relationship where we agreed kids were not ideal because of the chance of disabilities. Whilst not in that relationship anymore, the cost of childcare for a disabled child is unfathomable, as well as the required time and effort. As my partner was disabled, we couldnt afford the time to look after her AND a child.
Additionally, I work for an industry that has the potential to do a lot of good and make a lot of positive change, yet the only projects that get funding are related to military applications or from industries that have already contributed to pain and suffering to humans through deceit, and that just doesn't sit right with me anymore... I'd feel terrible funding another life off the back of direct death and destruction, so whilst I'm glad my company has an anti-war stance, I can see the writing on the wall that the department might not be about for long.
As a final point, I'd also feel terrible about bringing a child into the world and throwing them into the meat grinder that is daily life. I can't see it getting much better as time goes on, only the chasm between wealth and poverty increasing.
So I opted for sterilisation and went under the knife last Christmas, and since then I've been nothing but emboldened in my decision. People in the office quietly talk about worrying for their kids future, the news presents more and more depressing correspondence (I actively avoid engaging with the news, but keep abreast of world events through Tildes and glancing over the articles posted) and more and more people look to alternatives to the reality thats in front of them, from drugs and alcohol, to meditation and religion. It's startling just how much discontent in existence (and on the other hand ignorance too) there is on a day to day.
One of the most obvious questions i got was "what if you change your mind or meet someone who wants kids?" And my response is "so we compromise and adopt? We don't add to the pile, strain resources more than they already are, and we give a loving home to someone that's unlikely to get it from their birth parents for whatever reason that may be?"
Edit: I don't want my comment "quietly emboldened" to come across as holier than thou. I believe everyone is free to make their own decisions, based on their own judgement, but recently its been alarming to see people reacting and becoming aware of what's going on around us yet still thinking "let's bring another person in to experience this". It doesn't make sense to me as an individual, hence I went the route I did.
The U.S. Census Bureau population clock
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
YouTube mirror of the podcast episode, for those hit by the NYT paywall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW63FmvX5Qo
I will make time to read this article.
It is good news, but I find it hard to believe, especially with what the NYT has been doing to it's credibility lately.
I hope I am wrong.
It's not an article. It's an episode of The Ezra Klein Show podcast.
I just finished listening to it.
I think it is good news.