Reply to Couple Friends Don’t Want Kids

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly having kids should be exclusively for people who WANT to have them. On the rough days with my kids I always know how much I wanted them and that I choose to have them and I’m at peace with how hard it can be. No one should ever be put into 18 years of parenting without choosing it. If your friend knows herself well enough to think that wouldn’t work for her, I applaud her understanding of herself. I think the choice to not have kids is a harder one in many respects and people who go against the majority have probably thought about it more than people who always just wanted children. [/quote]

Yeah! On the other hand we're facing a population crisis - not enough kids being born. I think it's worth asking what is going on with our society that is making so many of us not want kids. In my case it was partly just, I didn;t want them - but if I didn't have 20 years worth of student loans to pay off, and life were cheaper and easier, I could have leaned the other way. I'm not saying it's all money money money, but we make it really hard for people to have kids in this country - some support could make it a more appealing prospect for those who are on the fence.

In short - I agree with you, and also I do worry what's going to happen when there is a teeny tiny younger generation and we, like, don't have enough food to eat because there's no one left to grow it. So I think maybe we could try to encourage more people to want to have kids, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. [/quote]

No, we aren't.  There are plenty of people on the planet -- too many, in fact.  We could solve this "crisis" with immigration.  But I agree that we make it hard for people to have kids in this country -- it's expensive as hell, and we as a society say that because having kids is a choice, it's your obligation to figure out how to pay for childcare and healthcare and retirement and education and housing all by yourself, and no one else should have to help pay for your choice.  And so many people are, quite rationally, deciding that it's too hard, and they don't feel like they can manage those things, especially with things like student debt and uncertain employment.  Add in things like climate change and other big problems in the world, and it should be no surprise that people are having fewer kids.[/quote]

Population is peaking and will start shrinking globally soon if it hasn't already. If we don't reduce population gradually we will have a younger generation incapable of supporting the older generation.

People are having fewer children because more and more of the world is modernizing and when countries modernize their population growth stymies. More education and more choice = less children. Immigration fixes the problem temporarily because those people are coming from less modern countries but their kids have the same tendencies once they are part of the more modern society.

Having children and caring for them well is a public service whether people like you want to admit it or not. Eventually my kids will be working in the economy and society that takes care of you when you can no longer contribute meaningfully to society. [/quote]

I was with you up till the last part. You have kids because you want them. If they happen to produce more than they consume, yay - but you certainly wouldn't have decided not to have kids if it turned out they had an overall negative effect on the world, right? You're not behaving altruistically by having kids - you made a self-interested decision.[/quote]

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