I think that you're right and that this is one of the predominant reasons for declining child births.
I think that if I were a woman that I would personally choose career or personal life first before having children, all other things in my life held equal. I have a lot invested in those things, they're here and tangible, and they bring me joy.
Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed that to be the leading factor. People had babies when they didn't have fresh food, running water, or even homes. Certainly far worse lives than we have today.
Peter Zeihan, whose YouTube prognostications seem iffy, likes to call children "expensive furniture". They were useful labor on the farm a hundred years ago, but in small apartments they can be a real nuisance.
Modern parenting is wild - there are too many rules and regulations and things just have to be just perfect to have a kid. Our great grandparents just had them all over the place and would let them roam around in the wilderness. Today we have to coddle and bubble wrap, sign them up for classes, take them places. Just thinking about it seems stressful.
At the same time, we've got these little dopamine cubes in our pockets that are taking our time away from socializing and dating and meeting people. It takes time and deliberation to find someone to settle down and commit to raising "expensive furniture" with for the next twenty years. You can just keep scrolling your feed and filling life with experiences.
Perhaps instead it's that the modern life creates the perception that something different or exciting could be just around the corner - like a kind of hedonistic treadmill, or wishful longing. Our ancestors just accepted their fate and lived their short lives. We have too many things taking our time and attention, and everything has to be "perfect" before we commit.
Not making any value judgments here, just stating observations.
Yeah, drives me crazy when governments are trying to lower the cost of childcare with tax incentives or creating dating apps to encourage connectivity.
Yeah, this might convince some people, but money is not preventing educated women from having kids.
My 31-year-old ex-girlfriend told me she needs a high degree of career stability, especially after recently losing her job. Even if she landed a new role quickly, it often takes 1–2 years to feel secure and fully ramped up in a new position. As someone at a level 4/5, she'd likely be aiming for a promotion once that stability sets in. Realistically, that puts her promotion around age 33 to 35, which is right around the time when starting a family becomes more biologically challenging.
Burn the grind from 18-25 or so, saving everything you can, and around 25 switch to WIC and EBT and all other subsidies you can find, and make them babies!
(It’s an actual if accidental strategy employed by some).
I think to qualify for FMLA (have your job protected while you go on unpaid maternity leave) you have to work for a company for at least a year so if you lose your job unexpectedly that can postpone having a family as you have to re-set your FMLA timer.
Our dreams and aspirations, a product of our society, do not easily fit within our biology and our short lifespans. I'm not just talking about women and children.
There's too much opportunity (good!) and too much opportunity cost.
We're truly gradient ascent explorers in the rawest sense. And our adventures take us off the evolutionary path. We've jumped the shark on our biology.
> Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed that to be the leading factor. People had babies when they didn't have fresh food, running water, or even homes. Certainly far worse lives than we have today.
One thing to consider is choice. Historically women didn’t have the ability to avoid having children short of abstinence, and even that wasn’t a given in a culture where marriage isn’t voluntary, marital rape is legal, education limited, and you’ve had religious indoctrination saying it’s a sin your entire life. Men didn’t have the risk of dying in childbirth, but had the rest to varying degrees (e.g. stories about wives pleading for children with men who in the modern world would be recognized as queer).
Now that people have choice, the technology to implement their decision, and a huge financial swing (children are expenses rather than cheap labor and your retirement plan) that historical baseline is increasingly irrelevant.
> I think that if I were a woman that I would personally choose career or personal life first before having children, all other things in my life held equal. I have a lot invested in those things, they're here and tangible, and they bring me joy
And then you're 35/40 and pregnancy, let alone more than one is way more complicated.
"Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed that to be the leading factor. People had babies when they didn't have fresh food, running water, or even homes. Certainly far worse lives than we have today."
Historically, women didn't have bodily autonomy, had lower education and when those two points have not applied (recent history) there has been hope of an improvement around the corner.
Women now have bodily autonomy, have higher education, and many people today only see a downward trajectory economically speaking.
I think that if I were a woman that I would personally choose career or personal life first before having children, all other things in my life held equal. I have a lot invested in those things, they're here and tangible, and they bring me joy.
Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed that to be the leading factor. People had babies when they didn't have fresh food, running water, or even homes. Certainly far worse lives than we have today.
Peter Zeihan, whose YouTube prognostications seem iffy, likes to call children "expensive furniture". They were useful labor on the farm a hundred years ago, but in small apartments they can be a real nuisance.
Modern parenting is wild - there are too many rules and regulations and things just have to be just perfect to have a kid. Our great grandparents just had them all over the place and would let them roam around in the wilderness. Today we have to coddle and bubble wrap, sign them up for classes, take them places. Just thinking about it seems stressful.
At the same time, we've got these little dopamine cubes in our pockets that are taking our time away from socializing and dating and meeting people. It takes time and deliberation to find someone to settle down and commit to raising "expensive furniture" with for the next twenty years. You can just keep scrolling your feed and filling life with experiences.
Perhaps instead it's that the modern life creates the perception that something different or exciting could be just around the corner - like a kind of hedonistic treadmill, or wishful longing. Our ancestors just accepted their fate and lived their short lives. We have too many things taking our time and attention, and everything has to be "perfect" before we commit.
Not making any value judgments here, just stating observations.