> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else).
In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income. That's before even considering environmental factors. I don't think there's a decision an average person can make that's more ecologically destructive than having a child.
Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.
Add in college and support through early-twenties (pretty baseline scenario for upper-middle class parents in the US) and the financial calculation is even tougher.
That said, if the most thoughtful potential parents don't have and raise civic-minded children, the percentage of new humans raised by less "enlightened" parents will increase, leading to a downward spiral.
For my part, I'm confident that the world is a better place because my two daughters are in it, and I'm definitely a better person for having been their father.
Do you suggest every generation has it better in terms of the disposable income, so the kids can easily afford to support themselves _and_ fund their parents retirement? :)
If your goal is to get into a debate on the financial returns to yourself based on children as some sort of investment vehicle then this won't go very far.
At a macro level, without children human civilization ceases to exist. That's the extreme case.
At a personal level, you have to look an intentional decision not to have children and compare it to the alternative. I am not including those who are unable to have children in this because I have known many couples through my life who weren't able and I fully realize what a difficult subject it is.
For those who chose not to have children, what is the ultimate financial or life goal? To have more disposable income to buy stuff, eat more fancy dinners? What's the point of investing or saving if you won't be able to pass it on?
Choosing not to have children is the result of years of pandering influence trying to convince people that they can't afford it, they aren't good enough, they'll be less happy, they'll have less avocado toast or a less important career. The goal of the marketing is two fold: either a) pander to a person's selfishness and convince them of all they will lose by having children or b) pander to a person's selflessness and convince them that the world is an overpopulated, terrible place that no compassionate person could possibly bring a child into. Both are coordinated messages designed to convince you not to have children.
Having children, on the other hand, ensures continuity of civilization. Ensures continuity of your family. Everything that you have learned that you feel value to pass on you get to teach to your children. You get to watch them grow up, teach them lessons from your own life, watch them become good citizens helping other people, falling in love, starting families of their own and contributing to society. You spend your life guiding them, helping them through difficulties.
All of the investments that you make financially can be passed on. You teach your children the financial lessons that you've learned and about the areas you wish you knew more about so that they may be able to be good stewards and improve on it from there. You teach them to be generous, to be charitable, to volunteer. You get to watch your children, grandchildren and sometimes even great grandchildren grow. And when you get old, that same family is there to care for you in your time of need.
Everything about your children is a multiplier of your family's values; your values.
Some of the people I mentioned who couldn't have children of their own chose to adopt. Some of them poured their time and energy into the service and education of youth. It's working towards the same goal.
Having children is one of life's greatest gifts. The institutions going out of their way to try to convince people not to have children are some of the most malicious that the world has ever known. If we were to ever quantify the number of lives that simply don't exist today as a result of those messages, the toll would be extreme. For people who have fallen victim to those messages, I hope there's still time to realize the truth.
Unfortunately our economic system is a ponzi scheme that requires having children while constantly putting them into deeper and deeper debt. It will eventually collapse and take VWCE with it.
Sure, as long as you're comfortable, meaning you can find a good job that will work around your parental duties, and thst pays well enough you can rent or buy within a catchment area :)
Sure, that's doable. Millions of working parents in powerty in every G7 country can attest how easy it is.
> Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.
Objectively if no-one has kids then there will be no more humans. I guess you could consider that an ecological win. If you don't, then someone has to have kids.
No, there will be plenty of Hindus and Muslims, cos they largely don’t give a fuck about any of this noise.
But Christianity and Western Civilisation can kiss its own arse goodbye if it thinks this is a reasonable ideology to instil in to its young people.
Don’t have kids because it’ll economically ruin your life, and it’s bad for the environment anyway.
Righteo then, get on ya spaceship n fuck off to Mars then. Free up some resources and economy for us who believe having a family is the most important thing humans can do and that Western civilisation is actually pretty neat!
"No, there will be plenty of Hindus and Muslims, cos they largely don’t give a fuck about any of this noise."
Have you looked at the TFRs in India and more developed Muslim countries lately?
Mostly under 2 and still dropping like a stone. Turkey, Iran or UAE are every bit as much on the road to disastrous demography as Europe is, only with some delay.
Does not surprise me... in both Europe and East Asia, the worst and deepest drops in fertility happened in previously very socially conservative societies (Spain, South Korea), while the trend was less sharp and sudden in, say, Scandinavia.
Then I can be a millionaire just by having five, six kids! Because that is 48 median gross incomes, which is $4m. Better growth curve than most YC startups!
> Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.
As a mid-fourties family-less man, I absolutely regret many of the decisions I’ve made that got me here.
I’ve realised I’ve been playing at a low steaks table. Smashing box and doing drugs is something a guy should do very briefly, if at all, in his early twenties. This is not a Man’s Game.
Then he’d better man up and focus on what is Good and Right or his life will be a fucking waste.
I mean even just purely selfishly, being frail-aged and having no one who genuine cares about me is fucking terrifying.
Damn, that’s heavy man. I’m sorry. I don’t know your situation but men are fortunate enough to be able to reproduce later in life so you could still turn it around.
I had my first kid accidentally in college and dropped out to focus on that. Very grateful for it.
This (rational) attitude is why state pensions need to have a strong correlation with the number of children you parent until they complete secondary schooling -- there needs to be a financial payoff for the time, effort and money invested; those children are the ones financing the state pensions.
The people planning for retirement are mostly past child raising age; the best way to have bugger families is to encourage low standards and unprotected sex amongst young adults, which is the exact opposite of the public health and morality pressure my entire generation and those that followed me have been on the recieving end of.
That said, medical tech is speeding up like everything else, so non-human surrogacy, artificial wombs, longevity meds, are all likely to impact this balance on similar timescales to such a cultural shift.
> bigger families is to encourage low standards and unprotected sex amongst young adults
Factually incorrect.
The best way to ensure big families is to foster a culture getting marriage younger, stating married, and starting families younger.
Women have their best years of fertility from about 17 to their early thirties. Telling young women to prioritise long educations and a career over family is counter productive to carrying on a civilisation, and has largely gone on to be proven something many women regret - unsurprisingly.
Strong, cohesive, multigenerational families don’t come simply from encouraging young people to have unprotected sex, although yes that is a crude component of it.
You have a western view of things. There are other cultures which have communal upbringing, e.g. Kibbutz, Hadza, and ǃKung; and while they have ceremonies which are called marriage, Europe has seen religious conflicts over the things smaller than the difference between ǃKung and Catholic marriage sanctity.
The fact is that marriage as it is understood in the west today bears little in common with the institution of the same name in the same place in the 1950s, which itself was different from the institution of the same name in the 1800s depending on if you were in a Catholic or Protestant area, all of which differ from the institution of the same name in the 1500s, all of which differ from the institution of the same name in the 1200s, which themselves varied from Roman and Greek marriage that were different from each other. In the present day, the Mosuo so-called "walking marriage" is essentially indistinguishable from what a European or American would call "teens dating and being allowed to stay the night".
> Strong, cohesive, multigenerational families
I didn't say any of those adjectives.
The Mosuo case demonstrates your claim is false, regardless.
Furthermore, when the fear is a concern of not enough workers in the next generation to pay out the pensions of the old, it is unclear why any of your list of adjectives matter.
Only one culture gave us pretty much everything the modern world enjoys today: Western European culture.
Microchips, invented be Westerners. Electricity. Telecommunications. Space travel, space probes, space telescopes. We pioneered and perfected all of those things. First to end slavery. Universal suffrage, gay marriage. We did all of that. Modern medicine, antibiotics. First to solve HIV. Eradicated malaria, tuberculosis, polio. All Western achievement.
Other than the Jewish tradition you mentioned, the others are merely irrelevant.
Other then Israel in the Middle East, basically no one is queuing to get in to countries other then Western ones. Everyone wants to come to the advanced European economies, France and Germany, the UK, and the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia.
Why? Because we’re awesome and everyone wants what we have.
In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income. That's before even considering environmental factors. I don't think there's a decision an average person can make that's more ecologically destructive than having a child.
Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.