Ask Lemmy

Here's the thing: lower birth rates are actually a sign of a more developed country. There are a number of reasons for this. If you can't be sure if the system will properly take care of you in your late years, people tend to have more children so that there will be someone to take care of them in old age. If people (especially women) are better educated, there will be more of a focus on persuing careers, and children can be an impediment to that. Also, if people have better access to healthcare and birth control, many will use it. Just a couple of examples.

Opportunity to do something else with your life. Kids are unaffordable. World is going to shit.

As the average income of a country goes up, birthrate goes down. That's just how humans are. We guess at reasons, but it's just a universally observable fact.

All high income industrialized nations developed low birthrates. North america, europe, japan, korea and now china.

If rich nations allow room for anyone else to claw their way up out of the low end of the value chain, we'll see the same thing happen there.

Feminism/Equality and the changes it has brought.

This isn't a bad thing, which is important to get out early because some far-right groups use it as an example for why we should wind back the clock.

Most women in advanced countries work, they have and want to have meaningful careers. Having children conflicts with that, in the immediate significant time off, and the long term impact of being the default parent when they have issues at school or are sick.

Lifestyles in advanced countries really rely on two incomes. Stopping work for a significant period to raise multiple children is a significant impact on that income, plus the long term expenses of the child combine to reduce that lifestyle. Not having children, or reducing the number, can be an economic choice.

The culture of both parents working also impacts the support network. Your working, your friends are working, the village is behind a desk not supporting you.

Finally women get a choice now, which is a change that is recent, isn't global and doesn't seem to be as widely acknowledged as it should be.

Society needs to change to address these issues and provide these missing supports. Which is going to take time, but as they are addressed we will probably see the birth rates start to climb again.

The fragmentation of multigenerational households. Without that support network, raising children is much harder and more expensive and much, much more daunting.

I really, really dislike children

I have an amazing life, and the way I live is completely incompatible with kids, even if I wanted them

More people are realising that it's not compulsory to breed, and that they can have vastly better lives without children

I know what you mean, but your queetion is incorrectly phrased

My personal reason is impossibly stressful, abusing, stealing and raping legal system and the society we face.

Otherwise I would have 10 kids

As quality of life rises there are more things competing for peoples interest as well as the cost of large raising a child being very high. Like if you're 25 and making money do you want to fly around the world creating experiences and having fun in the short term or do you want to save up your money to spend it all on your kids.

To increase births the recurring living costs need to go down, we need housing to ~20% rents or house prices. Maybe groceries down 10% and we're probably see an increase. Public daycare's becoming more common as well because that costs an arm and a leg.

Also im reason only leaving out working time because its not bad here averaging 37 hours per week with lots of holidays and paid maturinty leave and your job must be held open for you to return to.

Isn't it obvious?

They don’t want to.

This is a great question, and I highly recommend diving into this and it's implications. It's a sort of simple answer, but is really very complex with some deep fundamentals.

I went on a rant @lod's comment, which I maybe should have posted directly, but I've spent years digging in on this and it's impacts.

I'm happy to have direct conversations about it, but I have found out that Lemmy isn't the forum for more than simple direct answers.

I hope you get some great answers though!

One more thing. It's not that people don't have kids. They just have less kids. For example, in my apartment building out of 16 families, 2 have 3 kids, 8 have 2 kids, 2 have one kid and 4 don't have any kids. That looks fine but it's still way below replacement levels. Couple of decades ago we would see many families with 4-5 kids and vast majority would have more than two. Now majority of people stop at 1 or 2. For majority of people having more than 2 kids is hard to justify. You already have your family unit, why have more? Having 5 kids is considered weird now.

Online, parents are candid about how crappy parenting is.

We can see this and learn from it.

Multiple times, I have seen parents sympathizing with other parents who have such an overwhelming urge to shake their baby that they have to abandon the kid and go to another room.

Lots of different reasons depending on the context of the person (lack of money, bleak future outlook, not wanting to pass down family trauma/bad genes etc)

Social pressure. Anywhere you go children are unwelcome.

Other than spaces specifically designated for children, you won't exactly be encouraged to bring your kids. Most activities people find necessary or fun like workplace, entertainment, travel, parties, etc, are exclusive of children.

And it doesn't work like that. "it takes a village to raise a child" as the saying goes. Raising children is not something that can be compartmentalized into a separate sphere of life, while you still perform all the activities you were used to or liked without them.

Add to that the cost of housing - you need to put those children somewhere - and you have the perfect storm.

1. Income increase.
2. Fear
3. See #2

Education the more educated you are the likelihood you start too see how having children means responsibilities. That compounds with numbers and in turn money. Being uneducated would not have that thinking they would just shit out children like chickens. With little to no care for their upbringing.