Dropping fertility rates have been an area of interest for me lately, both on a private level and and more broadly on a psychological/societal one. It's an issue that a few years previous I blamed on an increasingly hedonistic culture, and yet, the more information I gather on the subject, the more complex an issue it becomes.
We tend to think of it as an issue of our times, and yet, as one UnHerd article points out, this drop in fertility can be traced back to at least 100-150 years ago, all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, and even before, to the French Revolution. Yes, fertility rates are going lower and lower as we move along, but it started long before the TikTok generation, and the yass queen generation, and all these other modern trends telling women what a bust it is to have a family.
The article also offers an interesting reason as to why this might be the case. Many have tried - I've heard experts blame it on more higher education for women, hedonism, decline of religious practices, anti-natalist agendas, and a slew of other things.
I look at it from my own perspective as a 20-something woman - we're led to believe kids will impede your career development, social life and are just so damn expensive at the end of the day. But when we think of that, we think of the immediate next few years - the diapers and the toys and the food and the stuff kids need which, to be fair, is excessively priced. But. As the author of this one article suggests, it's not so much that having children (the act of keeping one alive, clothed and fed) is expensive in itself, but rather that the process of rearing successful young adults is beyond our material (and perhaps psychological means).
"The Industrial Revolution would play its part too, leading to fertility decline in almost every single country on earth — starting with Britain. It would create conditions in which the success of children became almost completely reliant on parental investment — except in this case the investment would become exponential. In a highly competitive market economy, parents spend vast sums on equipping their children for the rat race. No child can be overly prepared."
And so perhaps it's not just the voice on my Instagram feed telling me I'm better off sipping a Mai Tai on the beach instead of raising a baby, but a more primal, firmly-rooted mistrust of our society. And that's not even factoring in the hectic political scene. Just the 'how the fuck do you survive' scene. Could it be we're not having as many children as perhaps we should be because we're afraid in 20 years' time, they'll turn out to be failures?
Have we given up, in a sense? Because that's what that mentality would suggest - not only have I resigned myself to the idea that I will fail in this life (socially, economically, etc.), but also that my children will be helpless, too. Seems a grim way to look at things, and yet, the numbers don't lie.
"In other words, our psychology tells us that each child requires ever increasing amounts of investment in order to “survive” in today’s society, when in fact the adaptive strategy would be to have five healthy but slightly less wealthy children, instead of two super-elite ones. So, while people are correct when they say that children have become more expensive, perhaps the more important thing is that they feel so much more expensive than they really are."
But then, what really needs to change in order to increase our birth rates? Because if this lady is right, and the problem is the rhythm of our society itself, it's a much bigger change we need. What's interesting to me is that when we talk about our society's focus on materialism and about investing in our children, we think about violin class, chemistry tutoring and the latest iPhone. Naturally, when childless young people or even new parents think about having kids, they think about the immediate years (the baby's needs, the toddler's needs, certainly not the young adult's future needs). No prospective parent is talking about their deep fear that their child would turn out to be a failure, that they would not be able to thrive financially in 25 years' time. So then, even if we fix this idea that "having kids is expensive" we're fixing it on a surface level, on the baby and toddler level.
So then, I guess a question would be - How do you convince young people that they are, in fact, capable of rearing successful children?
Because I do think that's the case. That even though many things are currently precarious, I do believe in humanity's ultimate resilience and adaptability. And also,
Would convincing them of that be a lie?
Because you look around as a young person now and think I have no money to buy a house, since real estate is through the fucking roof, I'm perhaps in debt severely already over my studies, car, whatever, and my job is threatened by robots. Perhaps a big issue for young people, at least in the West (can't really talk for other places, can I?) is that we're living in times of profound instability. As the author of the article, as well as demographer and researcher Lyman Stone conclude, panicking and fear-mongering is not the solution.
As scared as we might currently be, it is not our right nor our place to decide the when the species ends, and certainly not to let such a weighty decision be skewed by fear. On a larger societal level, I have no clue. Perhaps we blow up tomorrow and this will have all been in vain. But on an individual level, I believe we work towards change by seeking out sources of meaning in our lives, and I don't just mean children themselves. A child born to frightened parents will often grow up to be a frightened, anxious child. Perhaps on a personal level, combatting this steep decline in birth rates begins with finding a sense of purpose, looking for the good in your world, even if that means sometimes forcibly tuning out the bad.
It seems to me we are all our (future) children have, right at the get-go, and if they arrive or grow up to find we've given up on this place and on this species already, we're fucked. So I look for beautiful things. For meaning that is beyond my personal, immediate gratification. And for trust in myself and others around me that we may not know how to equip financially successful future people, but that striving to instill good, pro-humanity, pro-Earth values will have to be enough.
After all, it's a supremely 21st century trait to think we're living in the worst times ever, that ours is the only or greater instability ever known to humankind. Tell that to the people cowering in the cave, in the dark. Living through plagues, famine, war. The usual suspects. Tell that to the people alive during the French Revolution or Hiroshima. The supreme difference between us and all those other terror-stricken societies of the past is that we have more access to information (and implicitly fear-mongering outlets) than ever before Perhaps that can provide some explanation as to how we've ended up so anxious and terrified we can't even fuck anymore. And perhaps the simplistic, more immediate solution to this great problem is tuning out the terror and crafting for yourself and for those around you a world worth living for.
Have been wanting to comment on this for some time but no idea where to do it without getting cancelled, I figured here might be one of the most appropriate (still possible of being cancelled but chances are lower).
I have to admit that I'm incompetent at it, and will never be. Most people I came across are incompetent themselves, despite claiming otherwise. It does not matter what their financial background is or whether they can afford it or not. The risk of anything going wrong is too high and most people do not have that kind of risk appetite.
This is logically true especially to me. For instance whenever something goes wrong (i.e. critical bug with Hive or VSC nodes or the apps that I work on here) that needs my immediate attention I will have to get to it ASAP. Or being able to afford to meet you at HiveFest without thinking too much about other stuff.
I personally believe there is no direct "fix" to this, those who are complaining about it should actually fix what is wrong in this world first. To me this can be simplified to 3 things: financial, healthcare and education systems. BTC (or HIVE or other decentralized altcoins that does not resemble a CBDC) needs to be adopted everywhere in the world. I'm disappointed that in the last 16 years of crypto's existence that this hasn't happen yet. The other two will be easier when we have something that cannot be arbitrarily inflated by a central entity.
I should hope at least here we'd be safe from that. Besides, even if I disagreed aggressively with your perspective, which I don't, what power have I to say my view is superior or get you cancelled? :) I'm glad you did comment on this, as it's a subject I want to look at from as many perspectives as possible, so thank you.
I definitely feel for what you are saying, but I would also say give yourself more credit. You work in something quite difficult, which automatically implies you're good at problem-solving, smart, and quite resilient. Those are not qualities to be disregarded in a parent (or just a human being!). :)
I think that points to a deeper truth, especially in that a lot of younger generations are being infantilized and led to believe they are unable to face or fix any malfunction in their lives. So what you say about them being risk-averse is probably very true in a way.
That's true also. I wish I could, personally, but to be honest with you, I worry that if we delay tackling the fertility problem until everything is fixed, we risk dying out. So for me on a personal level, the fix is much smaller, i.e. having children and attempting to give them an education reliant on the values that might help us go forward. But I believe we each play our part. I do think there are good people, like yourself, fighting the good fight towards fixing our world on a larger scale :) Contrary to what you said, you strike me as someone quite competent :)
Well others who read my comments who strongly disagree may start downvote wars against me or get me voted out as a witness. My rank has grown significantly lately from rank 90th-100th at the start of the year to rank 27th today, so anything I say will assume more accountability than ever before.
I appreciate your compliments, it made my day 😃
That's a fair concern. Well. I hope you don't get canceled. :)
And congrats on making it so high!
Thanks for the insightful comments from your perspective.
I would say that firstly, it takes two people to have kids and you share the load. If you have some urgent tech issue to deal with your wife would help look after the kids.
Second, from a fairly early age kids go to childcare so you do have time to get work done.
Thirdly, you underestimate your capacity. It is not that difficult to look after kids. Feed them, wash them, clothe them, give them some attention and teach them basic life and household tasks. It's not rocket science or tech coding!
It can be gruelling and repetitive sometimes (things I find hard) but the rewards of love from your children are great compensation. There is nothing that is beyond the capacity of the vast majority of young people, including yourself.
You are a talented, impressive and brave young man. The way you spoke at HiveFest despite the language barrier and have made yourself an important part of the Hive Dev community speaks to your courage and resilience.
At the end of the day there is no perfect parenting and no exam. Whatever you do your kids will be screwed up one way or another - but everyone is and that's the beauty of the human race.
The world's problems will never be fixed but the only way you can guide the future direction of the world towards your values is to have children to pass your values onto.
That is a highly optimistic take assuming no highly disruptive event takes place. Divorce risk being at the top as rates have skyrocketed in my country in recent years.
Risk mitigation involves setting up irrevocable trust which is battle-tested in most jurisdictions. But that also means giving up self custody of my crypto to a trustee, and naming someone whom I can trust for this role is a near-impossible task (for now).
Thank you very much, that is an awesome compliment for me to hear. I appreciate your support over the years.
I was first alerted to this issue 20 years ago reading a booklet (published Nov 2003) on the fertility crisis by Malcolm Turnbull, who later became Prime Minister of Australia, yet did nothing about the issue when in power.
Re-reading it now, I am struck by how much worse the situation, already bad in 2003, has got. Almost all countries mentioned have had total fertility rates fall substantially, some by over 30%!
Korea from 1.14 to 0.7
Japan from 1.4 to 1.0
Not only that, but what followed in many places was 20 years of an increasingly aggressive anti-natalist agenda. For some mystifying reason, perhaps it was an issue they never actually meant to solve or fight against.
It's a good thing there's now room for more and more independent research and media to talk honestly about the problem.
Yes, Elon Musk has done a lot to raise awareness of the issue.
I am 68 years old and have 3 adult children. I always wanted to be a mother. I didn't give much thought to what the world was going to be like in 20 or 40 years; I just wanted babies. If God hadn't given women the urge to have babies, the human race would have vanished a long time ago. Yes, raising children is expensive in many ways, and there's no guarantee they will turn out the way we hoped they would.
Nobody knows what they are doing when they become a parent. I read lots of books on the subject while I was pregnant, but nothing really prepares a person for the reality of 24/7 responsibility for a helpless baby. So we learn as we go. That's the way it has always been. If we are lucky, we have family and/or good friends around to support us and answer our thousands of questions. I don't know why today's young people are afraid to dive in and go for it. Perhaps they think they can't do it "right", so they won't even try. But there's more than one right way to go about parenting. End of ramble.
I think you hit the nail on the head there, to be honest. It seems these newer generations are a lot more risk-averse and it seems to be related to their increased infantilization. There's a lot of talk I've heard about young people being afraid to take risks in their jobs and social lives without the go-ahead from "a grown-up", not recognizing themselves as such, and I imagine it ties into this childlessness epidemic also.
I like your comment a lot! I see it the same. It's why I'm not too crazy on this whole trend of blaming parents for not being perfect - parents are really just people doing the best they can, no? Some of them. And as long as you can know your folks did that, you should be happy, I feel.
Thanks for this lovely input! :)
I am glad you liked my ramble!
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A big part of the problem is birth control via tinkering with hormones. These drugs, essentially, produce a disease in a woman, the disease of infertility. Not all women who are unable to conceive took them, but a great many of them did. This has been for at least 60 of those 100 years. I don't believe that stat actually; where did you get it? The sexual revolution, like many of supposedly natural social movements, were contrived by tptb to ultimately destroy us, but not before the movements make us so sick and alienated we will pay anything to remediate a situation tptb deliberately put us in.
Oh I agree! (Not sure what stat you mean, but most of what I quoted above is from the Unherd article I mentioned). Hormonal birth control is madness, though I think it's a much bigger thing in the US than it is here. I was on it briefly for hormonal regulation allegedly and it gave me terrible headaches which scared the hell out of me and I stopped it. Found later it messed with my judgment, mood, everything, and I only took it briefly (6 months maybe). I don't want to know what it looks like if you take it for years, as many do.
I'm afraid of the same thing. Do you know Louise Perry (or perhaps Parry)'s book "The Case Against the Sexual Revolution"? It's a fairly recent book, last few years, and it really hits some of those nails on the head.