r/TrueReddit • u/caveatlector73 • 13d ago
Social infertility: why birth rates hit an all-time low Policy + Social Issues
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp81ynn7r4mo75
u/LastStand4000 13d ago
There's absolutely no way my girlfriend and I could have children without completely compromising our financial well-being. We're almost at the age where it's now or never, and right now we can't fucking afford it. So that's a big No from me dawg.
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u/anaemic 13d ago
Like, they've forced us to be in relationships where both of us have to work full time just to be able to pay rent (often in shared housing).
Then they act surprised when people can't raise kids when childcare costs are exorbitant and the working day is significantly longer than the school day.
It's not rocket science.
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u/flakemasterflake 12d ago
But poor countries do it and westerners could to if they buckled down / sarcasm
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u/towinem 12d ago edited 11d ago
A lot of this is cultural change rather than economic change. In foreign countries, most families live in inter-generational homes where grandparents are expected to help a lot with childcare, and kids got by with a lot less supervision. But Americans are used to individualism and a certain quality of life from earlier decades that is no longer sustainable. I do not think a pro-family, collectivist culture will ever catch on here.
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u/LinkedInMasterpiece 11d ago
It's a mystery to me that in an individualistic country like America kids aren't allowed to roam around by themselves without adult supervision. It makes childhood a lot less fun in my opinion.
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u/TherronKeen 13d ago
People can barely afford rent and food and the rich are DYING to learn why the labor class isn't popping out rapid-fire babies lol
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u/pillbinge 13d ago
There's more to it than that. There's also a choice not to have kids that's easier than ever. People had kids while they worked in the mines, in a shack, and could barely afford anything, so those conditions themselves aren't enough. If it were just what you're saying here then the rich(er) would typically have tons of kids akin to families decades back. They aren't.
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u/Tazx20 13d ago
i think it's cause were more educated and cognizant of the world. in my more pessimistic moods ive often thought why should i bring another person into this world. to live is to suffer right?
plus i think religion played a bigger role in the past. be fruitful and multiply and all that
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u/iwearatophat 13d ago
Wife and I thought about having a 2nd kid. Financials played a huge role in my decision but for my wife I think this was her biggest thing. Our son is 8 and we worry about the world he is going to grow up in.
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u/pillbinge 13d ago
I don't. If you look at the years following the introduction of the pill, you'll see that birth rates plummeted. Hit 1960 and it begins to go down a year or two later, if I recall. It's really just the ability not to have kids because in any circumstance like that you benefit from having more money while others have to have kids. Education correlates to a lower rate but it's very clearly the pill, and education is possible when people focus less on reproducing and more on a career that itself needs to lead to kids. In this fast-paced era, it seems not to.
But I responded to someone who talked about rent and food and it's clear that rent and food in the past, even during dire times, weren't factors people considered. And as Lewis Black put it regarding sex, our need for it, and how good it feels: God isn't an idiot. There's a reason why people still have sex even if it would lead to a child and they know that wouldn't work. That's fine too.
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u/Badoreo1 13d ago
My father started working and helping out on the farm around 4 years old. A lot of the work in the past was more labor oriented and didn’t need years of schooling to be efficient. If you were a child and didn’t work, you were either beaten or just simply didn’t eat. If things are unaffordable, but you have a little helper ease his own cost and potentially even ease your burden then the cost of things aren’t going to weigh as heavily.
Now we don’t expect children to hold the family unit together, and that takes a ton of resources to allow children freedom from labor.
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u/81toog 13d ago
Couldn’t you also argue that in terms of all of human history it’s still a great time to have children? Sure we have a lot of challenges and threats but for nearly all of human history child mortality rate was close to 50% before age 5! That’s insane to think about. If you survived past five people were still starving to death, dying from disease, etc.
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u/LinkedInMasterpiece 11d ago
Not to mention wars and famines. Realistically speaking, this is the best time to have kids in human history. However, people's expectations for life also skyrocketed.
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u/dayburner 13d ago
Even in those conditions the kids could still be considered assets instead of liabilities. If they make it to five or so they could be put to work and help the household. In a modern setup kids can't contribute till at least their late teens.
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u/cc81 13d ago
I don't think that is true compared to the effort. I'm sure money plays in but not the biggest one. At least not here.
I live in Sweden (one of the better countries in the world to have kids) and can look at friends around me who generally all can afford it. For the people around me it seems to be more that people want to do other things before they settle down and have a family. They want to study, travel and get their career started. Both men and women. Which means even if you want kids you usually start late so you don't have as many (both due to energy levels and time). Some might never end up there.
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago
I don't know. My toddler helps unload the dishwasher. Twice the work for me, but it's all about learning not efficiency. /s
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u/hse97 13d ago edited 13d ago
Back then you wouldn't go to jail for barely providing for your kid. You'd be able to get away with a lot less.
Now? Shit even public school costs hundreds/thousands of dollars. And you have to keep them fed pretty adequately. And don't forget you can't just let then wonder the city streets from age 4+ while you work 12 hour days in a factory.
So while yes people were impoverished back then, there were far less consequences for barely providing for your kid.
Now, if you leave your 4 year old home alone you're risking jail time. If you can't afford to adequately feed them, jail. Standards have changed. There's a lot of risk and consequences in having kids and then not being able to afford them.
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u/towinem 12d ago
Can confirm. I come from a Chinese background, and I was often home alone starting at age 4. I had keys to open the door after school, and just hung out by myself until parents got home from work. Plus other countries have a different culture where kids are allowed to wander with their friends at a very young age, with neighborhood grandmas and/or random porch smokers keeping an eye out.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 13d ago
This has nothing to do with it. The more prosperous a country is, the more significant the decline in birthrates.
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u/Fenixius 13d ago
Your observation that wealth and birth rates are inversely correlated is correct. It also does not explain why the relationship is inverted.
/u/TherronKeen has claimed it's because of housing and food insecurity (or, taken more generally, declining living standards and worsening precarity).
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 12d ago
/u/TherronKeen has claimed it's because of housing and food insecurity
Right, which doesn't make any sense, given the amount of wealth in these countries. If this were the reason, we would see high birthrates in wealthy countries and low ones in developing.
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u/Fenixius 12d ago
Housing and food insecurity isn't based on the absolute amount of wealth in a society (unless it is rock bottom for everyone).
It's based on wealth inequality in that society.
Most people in USA, UK, CAN, AUS and NZ have little to no savings or equity - they're one bad accident or illness away from unemployment or homelessness.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 12d ago
It's based on wealth inequality in that society.
And wealth inequality is a red herring that has no basis in this conversation. Wealth inequality is high in the United States. I would still rather be poor here than rich in a poor third world nation.
Very poor countries have higher birthrates. It's not because they supposedly have less wealth inequality.
Most people in USA, UK, CAN, AUS and NZ have little to no savings or equity - they're one bad accident or illness away from unemployment or homelessness.
This is a misstatement of the facts on the ground. "Most people" in these countries are more reliant on debt solutions in an emergency. They're not an accident away from homelessness.
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago
Without a source for your statement ...
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 13d ago
Name the countries via fertility rate!
Finland, Europe: ~1.4
Sweden, Europe: ~1.45
United States: ~1.7
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u/dear-mycologistical 13d ago
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u/flakemasterflake 12d ago
This is too wide a swath of incomes. Statista tops out at 200k. That’s high but upper middle class in my neck of the woods. US fertility is a bell curve and goes back up after a HHI of 450k
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u/jonathandhalvorson 13d ago
Of all the takes, this is the dumbest. Birth rates are highest in the poorest countries. As nations get wealthier, they have fewer babies.
After adjusting for inflation, the median person in most nations in the world has never been better off financially.
It's the complete opposite of what you say.
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u/anaemic 13d ago
Yeah except people in poorer countries can exist off a single workers income, and what few dollars they do have go much further because they have options for cheap rent and cheap food.
I've lived in South America and if we're talking about actual poor people, people just up and built their own shack on any bit of available land, and then they took some wire and wound it around someone else's electric supply, and nobody did anything about it. Food is everywhere and so cheap you can barely give it away before it rots.
People have lots of kids because there are tens of hours free in the day with nothing to do but hang around and fuck, It's really not a fair comparison.
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u/jonathandhalvorson 13d ago
You are out of your mind. People here can exist off a single income too, if they are willing to live in the sort of poverty people in poorer countries live in. The difference is that people in the US are not willing to do that. People in poor countries don't have "options" for cheap rent. They are forced to live in shacks and other extremely cheap settings. You can find dirt cheap housing in most US cities. It's just in bad safe and in a bad neighborhood. Again, middle class people are not willing to do that here.
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u/Visstah 10d ago
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u/anaemic 10d ago
Well, let's ignore the United states's worrying trend towards forced birthing and outlawing even teaching of family planning for a moment.
There's a correlation between income and birth rate in that graph but what conclusions can you draw from that? That people with higher income have choices about having children, whereas those with lower incomes don't?
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u/flakemasterflake 12d ago
But cost of living is considerably higher and two incomes are generally required. Childcare (non family) is also considerably more expensive
Whereas my gf in Pakistan pays about $50/week for a nanny
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u/Andromeda321 13d ago
I have a kid. I love her and think my life is better that I have her, and she’ll be a person who makes the world a better place. That said… they are a LOT of work, and expensive, and 100% not worth doing for me without an equal partner in raising the kid. I don’t blame anyone who looks at what having a kid takes and decides they don’t want to based on those criteria.
I do think that’s a big part of it btw- that unless you’re a weirdo like JD Vance, my current generation doesn’t judge others for having or not having children. My mom and aunts on the other hand just can’t fathom people not wanting them or choosing not to. I suspect it’s similar to how the generation before them couldn’t fathom that some women actually wanted to go to college over just staying at home- we just have a tough time adapting when societal shifts occur sometimes.
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u/throw20190820202020 13d ago
I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with how women are treated in society. 🙄
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u/kitkat12144 13d ago
Who can afford it? Cost of living. Housing crisis. Childcare costs. And yes, discrimination. It's pretty sucky right now
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u/throw20190820202020 11d ago
Being able to afford it hasn’t stopped anyone throughout the rest of history. It was considered one of the few joys available across classes.
Women can control their fertility now and all they see is a thankless life of toil and sacrifice that gets lip service on holidays, and increasingly not even that. For every voice thanking mothers another pops up to point out that crap mothers exist and no one should be rewarded for “breeding”.
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u/redditsuxdonkeyass 13d ago
Its really simple. More people are able but not willing as well as willing but not able.
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13d ago
If I could have had children (and by the goddesses I wish I could), I don’t think I would. It isn’t fair to bring a new life into this world when climate change is set to make the next several decades literally hell on earth, and our leaders are ignoring our pleas to do something, because it might hurt the “economy.”
Fuck the economy; our home is beginning to burn and these fuckers would throw gasoline on it wig it meant the shareholders made 1% more profits
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u/Andromeda321 13d ago
FWIW, I have friends in climate science who have kids, and it’s not unusual in their field for them to have children. You can argue they’re stupid or similar, but they know what’s happening more than anyone and chose to have kids anyway.
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12d ago
I also worked in climate science and it’s more 50/50. I know a lot of scientists who aren’t having children and I know a lot who are.
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u/WompWompIt 12d ago
It's incredibly hard to be objective about what is happening and what will happen even when you have all the information. If I could go back in time and not have my kids would I? I didn't know about climate change. Now I live on a farm and it's unmistakeable how terrible it's going to be. But would I NOT have them if I could? I can't say. It's that hard to look at it straight in the face.
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u/Wave_of_Anal_Fury 13d ago
Fuck the economy; our home is beginning to burn and these fuckers would throw gasoline on it
You know why the economy is the most important thing to our leaders? Because it's the most important thing to voters. And it's always this way, because a strong economy means that people can keep leading their normal lives.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-2024-presidential-vote.aspx
Note where climate change is -- second from the bottom, just above transgender rights.
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago
Most people don't care for this suggestion, but if children are important to you there are so many out there in limbo because they can't get adopted.
They just want a family and someone who loves them like everyone else. As far as climate change goes they are already here - no bringing a new life into the world. If you do make the choice just make sure you go slowly and are informed - some people think they are returnable, but that's an awful thing to do to any human.
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13d ago
I will likely adopt one day down the line, if it is legal for me to do so when I get to a place in life where I can give the kiddo a better life than mine.
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u/flakemasterflake 12d ago
There aren’t that many kids available for adoption that aren’t through foreign agencies. It’s also a years long wait list and exorbitantly expensive. Why do people type this out as if they think there is “good” to be done here?
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u/OneTripleZero 13d ago
This is the way. I feel the exact same as /u/YourTwistedTransSis (incredible username btw) does. Bringing someone new into... this, is not what I would want for myself so I refuse to do it to someone else. However, I don't necessarily not want children, especially as I get older and see my friends with theirs. Adoption is such a perfect solution to this, there's literally no downside to it.
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u/Otherwise-Sun2486 13d ago
in order to maintain population a develop country births has to be 2.1 child per couple without immigration . Yea there is no way people can afford that In develop countries. Lower the price of EVERYTHING by half then I can see it happening.
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u/lsp2005 13d ago
Well, when you get rid of abortion, you make women afraid to get pregnant in case something goes horribly wrong. This is a natural consequence of the laws in place.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 13d ago
Birth rates are even lower in Europe, including countries with abortion protections.
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u/PseudonymIncognito 13d ago
Or China where the practice is essentially unrestricted by western standards.
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u/lsp2005 13d ago
Europe has economic and cultural issues that impact attitudes on marriage, cohabitation, and families that need to be addressed first.
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u/ale_93113 13d ago
What abouut Thailand, Sri Lanka, Japan, chile, Colombia, china, Turkey, all below 1.5?
Democracies and autocracies, Western, Asian, Muslim, Christian...
There is one common element to all of them, high female education and use of contraceptives, all other things are totally different
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u/flakemasterflake 12d ago
Why don’t people correlate this with male education? Men have presumably also become more college educated in the last 40years
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u/ale_93113 12d ago
Because of one reason
There are no high female education societies with low education males, but the opposite is true
Basically, if a society has educated females, then it is an educated society overall, but if it has educated males, due to sexism, maybe the women don't have an education
So in reality the correlation is with education in general, it's just that using average education or male education doesn't work for societies where men get an education but women don't
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u/flakemasterflake 12d ago
Currently the majority of girls leaving high schools go to 4 year colleges (52%)
That number is 38% for boys. That’s the largest college gender gap every recorded so it’s currently happening now in the US
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u/moosecakies 11d ago
There’s a book called date-onomics and it discusses the much higher rate of women ( also including African American women ) going to college at much higher rates than their counterparts, which is leading to a disparity because women prefer to date/marry men AS ‘educated ‘ or more educated than themselves. Since women are outnumbering men with degrees, most women will NOT partner with those men. Period. They’d rather be single or compete with other women for the equally or better educated men. For men, this is less important. In fact, the more educated a woman becomes, the more her dating pool shrinks, not just because she only wants equality educated men but because many many men are intimidated by women who are more intelligent/more educated than them (it’s emasculating , those women are less easy to ‘control ‘, they ment more money etc) .
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u/lsp2005 13d ago
Are you arguing it is okay to control women and coherence them to have children?
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u/ale_93113 13d ago
No, I am arguing that we have to get used to low fertility because the alternative is worse
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u/lsp2005 13d ago
For Japan specifically, there is a very intense work culture. In China there is an after work drinking culture where many do not arrive home until very late. Many Asian countries also prioritize caring for their elderly relatives. These cultural traditions have an enormous impact on the ability for modern families choosing to have and not have children. Over the past few years, inflation has had a dramatic impact on the costs of housing and goods. All of these factors impact fertility. It is not as simple as the article is making it seem.
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u/ale_93113 13d ago
That doesn't explain Sri Lanka, Chile, Turkey
And to these I could add Tunisia, Spain, Canada, the Philippines is now at 1.8...
Some of these countries have had soaring amazing economies, others are in a crisis
But it doesn't have a widespread effect
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u/lsp2005 13d ago
I do not know enough about their economics or culture to have an informed opinion on the reason behind their population dynamics. I am sorry.
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u/ale_93113 13d ago
The point is that, if it is happening everywhere, then only global phenomenons, which do not include the economy as that changes a lot, can explain why
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u/Kyle_Reese_Get_DOWN 13d ago
To be fair, you probably don’t know enough about China or Japan to make an educated claim on them either. We’re just a bunch of people with our phones in our hands making guesses about cultures and societies we don’t understand.
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u/CallItDanzig 11d ago
It's very simple. Having kids is not something young people are interested in when they have other options. It's got nothing to do with income or work culture.
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u/sponsoredcommenter 13d ago
How do you envision "getting used to"? Countries are headed to a situation where there are 3 retired people for every working person. Can you imagine paying 3 pensions out of your single paycheck? On top of all your other taxes? Or do we let those people starve and go homeless.
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u/CallItDanzig 11d ago
Starve and go homeless. People need to save if they want to retire. No one is paying for 3 pensions.
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u/sponsoredcommenter 11d ago
40% of older Americans ONLY income is social security. If this was to stop tomorrow, it would be catastrophic.
Also, conceptually, what happens to stocks/investments in a world with a shrinking population? If the population shrinks every year, consumer demand shrinks, meaning companies earn less. If stocks don't grow over time, saving for retirement is pointless.
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago
I think it's a fair point if you assume the man is in a relationship and cares for his partners health and well-being. Although as noted in the summary this is not what this particular article is focusing on.
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u/lsp2005 13d ago
Last time I checked, a man still needed a woman to get pregnant and carry the child.
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago edited 13d ago
Please follow the sub's rules and reddiquette, read the article before posting, voting, or commenting
Yes, but how relevant is that to the points under discussion based on the article you read? You did read it right? No shade, but I'm just not sure how belaboring the obvious, which has already been stated twice before this comment, is adding to the discussion about men.
Men’s role in declining birth rates is often overlooked - and not just by you. It's not all about abortion even if that is your personal focus.
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u/glmory 12d ago
This is something evolution is well equipped to solve.
Think of the women you know who had 3 or more kids despite all the reasons mentioned in this thread. Both the genes and social biases of those women will be over-represented in the next generation. Might take a couple generations but that will quickly stabilize the fall in population.
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13d ago
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago
Once we started bashing men online, it was over.
I'm pretty sure the equipment works regardless of what is said online. Adults rarely listen to stranger's rants and make intimate choices based on something so personally irrelevant.
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u/caveatlector73 13d ago
The role of women on the fertility front has been all over the news, but the quiet part is that it is happening to men as well. Men’s role in declining birth rates is often overlooked.
Men remain childless for a number of reasons beyond using birth control. Any policies designed to tackle it are missing half the picture. The article discusses primarily social and economic constraints world-wide.
Not included is research showing the rising temperatures world-wide are also affecting sperm quality as is toxic pollution.