My BIL who works in ecology asked me why people are freaking out about low birthing rates, because in his area of specialty most people are still talking about the need to slow population growth down.
These articles often state ‘women’ not having babies like it’s a woman led problem.
It takes more than a woman to make a baby, a man is needed too. Society has made it so hard to have/want a child. Not m/f specific. Even if you do have kids, what world are are you bringing them into. Not m/f specific.
As a woman, you couldn’t PAY ME to have a baby, you NEVER could. You know that shit in A Handmaid’s Tale where they send the women who are too old to have kids out to work the fields until they die? Sign me up, because I’d rather be dead than bring a child into this world that has gotten only more and more fucked up as I’ve been alive. I always say, I love *my *children so much that I refuse to give them life on Earth.
I love *my *children so much that I refuse to give them life on Earth.
Yes! You can’t pay me enough to bring my children here to suffer. If I’m not willing to be part of anyone’s war, why should I subject my descendants to do that? We all know how this IRL “civilization” game is played. And it’s anything but civilized.
1st world problems: women arnt having babies, but refusing to address the actual issue.
at the same time creating the problem by removing womens rights, not addressing HCOL, and job prospects for MAJORS.
thier solution: half ass suggestions of having babies.
thier solution: half ass suggestions of having babies.
And forced birth! Fuck that noise.
Boy, this world sure keeps telling me to not have kids. Like everywhere I look, the signs all say NO KIDS! Jobs market, housing market, grocery prices, utility prices, healthcare costs, political divide, rising fascism, anti-intellectualism, rising concerns with AI, all of it!
Less babies less pollution I see no problem with this lol, of course stupid people have more kids but as long as education is still funded stupid people will have smarter kids which will vote out stupid peoples politicians
Yay!
Low birth rates are only problematic to carcinogenic ideologies.
Only a problem for oligarchs.
Many researchers believe this accelerating global shift is being driven in large part by a positive reality. Young couples, and women in particular, have far more freedom and economic independence. They’re weighing their options and appear to be making very different choices about the role of children in their lives.
Lol the wolves are upset the sheep aren’t breeding enough.
Ancedotal: I wanted 3 kids. I have none. I’d like to think I’d produce a better than average member of society. While I have more money than many Americans, I don’t feel like I have job security, financial security, and I see my country in a decline, where quality of life is lower than it was during my childhood, and my parents lifetime.
That’s the thing… They don’t want you to produce a better than average member of society. Better than average members are less likely to accept low wages in crap jobs without complaining. There are only a handful of good paying jobs in the future and those are for nepo-babies. Merit no longer matters.
For decades, we’ve been fed this narrative that overpopulation is eventually going to destroy the world. But, now that birthrates are declining…a shrinking population is suddenly the problem.
Both have their problems. A steadily and slowly increasing or stagnant population would probably be best
Pretty much the only reason why humans have had a population explosion over the last 120~ years is because of technology and oil. Prior to the industrial revolution the human population grew very slowly and would suffer significant declines from time to time. Greed is pretty much what got us here today.
They were maintaining the idea that we don’t live post scarcity. That there aren’t enough homes or food for the current population, so there can’t be enough for a large population. The rich will never give up being the elite class and will perpetuate artificial scarcity until they die.
we’ve been fed this narrative that overpopulation is eventually going to destroy the world
It’s always been wrong, and some of us have been arguing against that kind of neo-Mathusian worldview this entire time.
Note that the same view also leads to the incorrect conclusion that population shrinkage will be good for resource management, pollution, etc. If one believes that a large and growing population will deplete the world’s resources and destroy the environment, one might conclude that a shrinking population will help conserve the world’s resources and preserve the environment.
But look at how things actually play out. The countries with the shrinking populations are still increasing their resource consumption, and the slowdown in population growth hasn’t slowed down resource depletion in large part because humans don’t all use the same amount of resources. If the population of India shrinks to the size of the population of the United States, but then increases its greenhouse emissions to match that of the United States, that would be bad for the environment despite the population reduction.
A shrinking population isn’t really a problem in itself, but an aging population is. That’s the concern about birth rates, is the worry that unproductive old people will have their lives cut short rather than enjoying a reasonable retirement.
I get this, but we can’t have an infinitely expanding population, at some point it will have to stabilize, and there has to be the glut of old people at the beginning of that. People are aging more slowly than in the past, at least, even if living longer more of those years are good and can be productive.
I don’t think it’s an insurmountable challenge. Just that the ratio is what matters, which means abrupt changes to birth rates might be more problematic than the magnitude of the change over time.
But I also don’t think that a stable population size solves the climate crisis or resource depletion. It might be the case that 8 billion people in 2075 end up consuming way more energy and natural resources in an even less sustainable way than the 8 billion people of 2025.
Could be, sure. But also might not. That’s not really something we can know now, but I think we can know that a pyramid scheme is unsustainable. The price of less polluting renewable energy is falling fast, for one thing. I personally don’t think the big population is all bad, so many people means more good people too. So much technological progress.
Don’t worry. Elon will make fifty more babies to offset the difference. /s
But not really sarcasm, cause that weird fuck will probably do it.
Seriously though, this is the wealthy’s problem. They have the funds, let them have the kids.
Agreed; the system is now so completely inverted and has been for a while. The extremely wealthy can actually afford to have huge families and not suffer a huge setback in quality of life.
In agrarian societies where having more help around the farm was relatively cheaply done by having more babies, the poor would often have very large families. If most people are living in and near cities and very, very few have anything to do with farming, the cost per child is much different. People in the middle class that push children past something like 5 or so are almost guaranteed to be treading water or backwards, economically.
You mean capitalism is facing challenges on how to exploit workers when there are less people? Good.
I’ve heard this was one of the causes of The Enlightenment:
I am not a history expert, take what I say here with a hefty grain of salt
After The Plague killed a bunch of people, the rich didn’t have as many people to work on the farms. Thus the farmers suddenly had the ability to demand higher wages and working conditions. This led to the average person being able to buy things like books and pay for tutors, which in turn led to more people becoming educated and working in the arts and sciences.
To build on this, in Norway so many people died that in 1450 (100 years after the black death) 60% of all farms was left abandoned and the term Ødegård (øde = desolated/abandoned, gård = farm) was popularized. Ødegård/Ødegaard is still quite a common family name to this day.
Anyone that wanted could just go and take a farm and be their own boss.
Of course, in the 1500s when the population had increased sufficiently the farms all had to be rebuilt and the rich landlords claimed the farms in their area and the King took the rest. The peasants were allowed to work the farms if they paid the lords for the privilege.
In the 1600s a new underclass of Husmenn (hus = house) was created. They owned their houses, but not the ground. When they moved they would normally take their houses with them.
Ding ding ding. Capitalists are seeing the inevitable lack of blood for the blood god, and are starting to panic. Infinite growth in a finite system, after all.
The US’ population growth has been sustained by immigration. Guess what is being discouraged by the actions of the current administration?
Who tf is going to have money for children when there is so much financial uncertainty and the job market is this bad?
Well, without cheap labor from immigrants, companies are either going to have to pay living wages or go under. I am okay with both.
