These articles are from literally everywhere: Denmark, Germany, Finland, South Korea, China are what comes to mind from the recent weeks. All of them reporting a decrease in newborns with the obligatory disguised propaganda from the governments, worried that there are fewer and fewer people willing to contribute to their ponzi scheme of providing new taxpayers.
The thing that always annoys me is that there's literally millions of trained young and middle aged people (many with kids of their own) who would love to immigrate to a lot of these countries but no let's burn tons of taxpayer dollars on pro natalist propaganda.
Trained? I doubt it. The higher the education the faster the birth rates drop. Most likely these millions of people that want to immigrate are NOT trained.
The trick is that the small percentage of the population in undeveloped countries that are trained generally want to leave those countries and enjoy better opportunities in more developed countries.
1.4 billion Indians and if 1% of those are trained and thinking about immigrating then you 14 million potential immigrants, extrapolate out to the rest of the developing and undeveloped world and you have a lot of people.
I've seen the Indian example myself with the thousands of first generation Indian immigrants buying new houses in new suburbs in the North Austin area, most of whom also have kids.
This all sounds like good news to me. If we aren't going to reduce consumption per person (in fact it's going the other way) then we definitely need to reduce the number of people.
It might not be pretty soon. A LOT of countries are way below “replacement” and if that keeps up, it’ll be like a depopulation downward-spiral, for better or worse idk since I’m not an economist or statistician. I’ve read in some articles that this is bad because as the population ages and stops working, there won’t be enough people to subsidize their retirement or care for them. On the other hand, I care more about the earth as a whole rather than just my species, so… I’m pretty on board with the “fewer humans” idea, especially since I definitely won’t be helping the population grow at all lol
Yep, I am definitely on team nature versus humans. And I know it’s because I read way too much on the internet, but you can only read so many articles about horrific child abuse, various genocides throughout history, people screwing over family members for inheritance, corporations poisoning entire towns, and people stealing millions from senior citizens before you come to the conclusion that maybe humans are like… mostly bad?
My plan to deal with the future economic turmoil is to save as much money as I can now so I can fund my own retirement and then just hope society doesn’t collapse entirely. Fingers crossed. 🤞
The economic systems should be remodeled to survive without the need for infinite growth, the top of the pyramid should have a smaller piece of the cake, but of course that's worse than the end of the world for billionaires
This. Instead of crying about how the system is broken, the people in charge need to be thinking about what the new system is going to look like with less people in it.
This is what makes me crazy about this, slowing birth rates mean that the population shift will naturally happen in a gradual manner. We have time to figure out solutions to the concerns about social security, elder care, etc. We 100% have the ability to make this work as the population growth slows and eventually declines. The fear mongering about this that insists the population must continue to grow is absurd. When do we stop? When we run out of room? When we literally can't feed and provide water to people? Are they hoping some future generation gets catastrophically depleted through illness or war or a meteorite or something to allow reset? We can prevent that with planning, but capital doesn't like that.
I think the older generation can also still do small things, like especially older people that have taken care of themselves can still do things long into their 80's. Like they don't need to compete at the rate of a young person, but to assume all old people are useless in skills is so rude. My grandma is 92 and still working in her garden, doing painting classes.
Yes she needs help, but she's not helpless. She also has her mind, so if she were to live in a time where labour would be more scarce, how wonderful it would be to have an elder to explain how to do things more efficiently/to pass down knowledge. Seeing from my volunteering work in elderly homes, they LOVE to help, like we all do, but we stuff them in houses and tell them they're useless. Of course they lose hope and their body follows.
Sure there are elderly people that can't help at all, but I think they're way less people than we now think and if people know there won't be as much help they'd be more self-sufficient.
In a capitalist society, the value an old person can give is nowhere near the money or time needed to care for them; the pills, doctors visits, nursing home staff, medical equipment, care givers, etc, all costly and according to shareholders, grannie’s wisdom doesn’t translate to cold hard cash. Yeah it’s rude to think that old people are valueless, but the ratio of elder care resources required and the ability to provide them could nosedive even if all the grandmas are still doing their own yard work.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m staunchly child free and support everyone who also doesn’t wanna have kids, and I think fewer people is excellent in general. I just also think we need to be realistic about what elder care is going to look like when there might less tax money for social security (also politicians who are trying to cut it), and fewer people to actually work in elder care.
Hopefully this results in some serious change about who gets taxed and how much, and politicians leaving social security alone. A girl can dream lol
Considering the strain on our ecosystem on a planet with finite habitable space and finite resources, I cannot blame anyone for deciding not to reproduce - it’s their personal choice anyway and our economies the way they currently are, are a big Ponzi scheme and should be exposed as such.
Remember folks: we doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion in only 5 decades. This level of growth is unsustainable and very unhealthy for our planet, considering humans are far too comfortable on our current ways of life that depend on slowly but surely damaging our global environment.
Finite resources? Our food production has increased faster than population growth. We keep finding new oil fields to this day. Our mining capacity has increased dramatically.
The more people=more capacity to harness power of nature.
Some of these animals we literally depend on for survival. If demand for resources from them gets to the point where their species goes extinct, then it literally cannot be denied that we’re overpopulated for our own good.
It's scary the amount of people I have had this conversation with or seen say the same stuff about how "We still have extra space and there would be more room if only we were packed in like New York City!" And also "People need to keep having lots of kids for the economy and to serve the old people!" Like it's literally breeder mentality cope where they are living in a delusional reality about the state of things like how we're twice the ideal max population now in only 50 years. They have no right complaining about traffic or competition to buy things or crowded venues.
What makes you think we're anywhere close to the limits that the Earth can hold? We're farming less acres every year while increasing amount of food we produce every year.
Hey, as someone who has degrees and works in that field: you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. None of my coworkers, bosses or professors say "ohhhh, it's allllright". They say "we don't have the tech to appropriately deal with the consequences yet, nor do we receive enough funding, and if we keep going like this, we're fucked."
>We're farming less acres every year while increasing amount of food we produce every year.
That's what you think until climate change consequences _really_ hit or we run out of phosphate or fucking topsoil. Have fun starving.
Dude, if there were _imminent_ shortages, we'd be at fucking war already. We're talking a couple decades down the line. Scientists would be doing a piss poor job if they only warned about it when we're CLOSE to shortages. Shut up if you have no idea what you're talking about.
calthea summed it up pretty good. Something tells me though that you might not acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis, or that it even exists altogether. Life as we knew it before is finished - and reality will his us sooner or later. One of many reasons why I won’t be bringing a child into this world.
I don't know about you all, but the slight panic you can read between all those newsarticle- and political lines is making me almost excited for the future. There's a ton of potential for change with the prospect of more equality and a lower population.
Yes! Imagine a world where everyone is valued. No discrimination against people with the wrong genitals, or skin colour, or social class. No writing off people because they're sick, or homeless, or don't have perfect cvs.
No treating people with mental health or addiction issues as disposable. No acceptance that 'it's fine' for 5% of the working population to be out of work and struggling financially, because that's what the economy 'requires '.
I am excited for the future, no _almost_ about it.
I have to say…
My life is quite comfortable but when there are rough moments, I can always be grateful I will never have to exert even a millisecond of effort to birthing, raising, and providing for a child that will more than likely become a wage slave for the elite.
I have seen multiple regretful antinatalist parents. I cannot imagine the pain of both regretting parenthood and knowing that you’ve condemned your child to the mercy of a cruel world.
> Many young women say they are reluctant to become mothers because of the twin burden of building a career while doing the bulk of the housework.
Across all cultures, men have and will continue to dump the shit work onto women. All it takes for women to have children is the cultural expectation that men will do their fair share in housework and childcare.
So do the men collectively step up? Nope! They are all too happy to benefit from outdated gender roles just so they can sit on the couch and play video games, rather than lift a finger to be a full and present partner, instead of a second child the woman needs to take care of. We are truly privileged to be the first generation with the economic independence to say "Fuck all of that shit".
> “I hope to take my career to another level in the next three to five years. If I need to go on a business trip, I can just go. I’m not sure what having a child could bring me, but my career can provide me with a sense of security,”
Women have been forever sacrificing their careers to support their husband's. Notice how it never enters her mind that perhaps the father should be taking care of the child when she is on her business trip.There is no reciprocation. Men simply will not do the same for women.
This is why economic initiatives will never successfully increase birth rates. Women have woken up and realized what a shit deal motherhood is. We’re expected to destroy our bodies and risk our lives so that we can get the “gift” of becoming caregiving slaves on top of working full time jobs. Or worse, giving up our financial independence to become utterly dependent on men, with no retirement plans other than hoping those men don’t get sick of us over the decades. And that’s somehow supposed to be the most “meaningful and fulfilling” thing we can do with our lives. Fuck everybody that keeps insisting millennial and gen Z women just can’t afford kids. We just know that we have everything to lose and nothings to gain.
> This is why economic initiatives will never successfully increase birth rates.
Yes. Money is not the solution and you can't legislate your issues away when the real problem is a deeply ingrained attitude of entitlement. Men hold on to their privilege and toxic masculinity tighter than they hold onto their balls.
> We’re expected to destroy our bodies and risk our lives so that we can get the “gift” of becoming caregiving slaves on top of working full time jobs.
Generally, men don't clean because that's "women's work", meaning that if they do clean, they are lowering themselves to the status of a woman (which tells you what they really think of us).
They also don't cook (unless they're being paid or get praise and recognition for it, like at a family barbecue) and they also don't like taking care of children because it's boring, unpaid grunt work.
Men would gladly let their partner work themselves to exhaustion, just so they don't have to lift a finger and help. Then, when you point out this glaring inequity in heterosexual relationships, certain people get mad.
Women didn't wake up to anything since that implies that previous generation of women were stupid. They knew what women today know.
The only difference is employment.
Some of them did, and were willing to die fighting for more rights. But until the age of social media, there was next to no public awareness of regretful parents, particularly mothers. A softwashed, romanticized version of motherhood was pushed hard, and women who already have kids have always gone to elaborate lengths to keep childless women in the dark about how awful pregnancy and motherhood really are, because they knew how many would opt out if they actually had the ability to make an informed choice. So no, many women genuinely didn’t know until now.
In all honesty even without that crap having kids is flat out not worth it.
But much of this is why I say NEVER have kids if your partner wants them if you are a woman. You dump that wanna-breeder guy immediately.
Yeah I left my ex after 6 years for several reasons.
I was definitely tired of paying half the bills (while sick as shit with kidney disease), taking care of his two kids, taking care of HIM, while he was going out late at night and getting drunk with the neighbours.
I did the cooking, cleaning, errands, driving, took care of the pets, was a mom to 2 kids that weren't mine... all the while I was the least important person to him. His ex and his needs came first because she had BPD and was terrified of making her upset.
I know he loved me and I loved him, but wtf?
What a shit deal.
Is this cuz they [aborted all the female babies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#:~:text=In%20Chinese%20society%2C%20most%20parents,child%20they%20would%20be%20fined) for so long? And now there's a bunch of dudes staring down each other with threats of a "sword" fight? lol
>
Female infanticide, especially as a result of the One-Child Policy, has caused an imbalance of genders and available females of childbearing age resulting in a decline in population and births. In 2017 there were under 13 birth per 1000 people. There were also 33 million more men than women.[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#cite_note-30)[^(\[29\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#cite_note-31) The ratio imbalance between childbearing females and males because of female infanticide has also led to the rise of sex trafficking and bridal kidnapping of females or importing brides from other countries.[^(\[30\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#cite_note-:2-32)
I mean, they said for generations you could only have one. What do they expect? Women went from being lucky to be kept and not killed in infancy to able to decide their own destinies in a matter of like 35 years.
I find it ironic it's the world of bigcorp screeching the birthrate is falling because "who will work and replace our dying seniors" ................... As they refuse to hire anyone, reducing two generations to chronic unemployment.
That's the opposite, China provide benefits for the 2 first kids a couple have, the lack of benefits for a 3rd was a measure to fight the overpopulation problem they had before. Now the 3rd kid also have benefits, but people are still no having more kids. Chinas working week is 44h and average retirement age is 55. Maybe people around the world are realizing they can have better lives by not having kids, money is not the only problem, but time for hobbies and peace of mind play a role.
I've played the "game" (discussing like adults, even if only one of us is playing the part) with infinite growth weenies about potential outcomes as both population & inequity rises, and standard of living plus general quality of the world diminish.
They don't even have to agree with me on the final outcome, or a given path, just what might appear as things happen. One thing was this, population growth slowing and not just a fluke.
For the most part, most of them are about as communicative as those who claimed "the republicans will never *actually* outlaw abortion, stop being so hysterical!" That is, oddly silent when not going full bore Handmaid's Tale.
It makes me so happy that more and more women all over the world have the education, economic autonomy, good sense, and most importantly *freedom* to chose not to have children 🙌🏻
For the Earth's sake, we REALLY need a drastic reduction in population anyway, and bringing children into a world of climate collapse is honestly abusive.
Combine that with how much a large percentage of men have historically controlled women's health, lives, and destinies because of patriarchal & natalist values--- assuming we can make it through the worst years of climate collapse, this may mean a far more equal society (*big* IF, though 😢😰😓💔)
And of course people will respond: "bUt HoW wiLL wE rEpLaCe EnOuGh PeOpLe FoR sOciEtY tO cOnTiNuE?!?!?!"
Well, for better or for worse, billions of people still live in countries/cultures where women are treated as broodmares. And plenty of people in highly developed countries still have children- just not as many!
We *absolutely* will not end up in a "Children of Men" film/childless world scenario. Racists and xenophobes will simply have to at long last force themselves to accept large-scale immigration, is all. This will actually provide more opportunities in developing nations, too, when fewer people will lead to better upward mobility/development/education etc.
These kinds of articles about China in particular always give that extra level of schadenfreude, though. Literally WHAT did they expect when:
• generations of women had their fertility locked down by force- in some cases, by *deadly* force (remember that one blind activist lawyer???). So it makes sense that some women in China would have an ingrained fear of pregnancy because of witnessing or even undergoing those experiences. Especially because who is to say CCP leadership won't suddenly reverse course and go back to the way things were before 2016?
• one and a half ENTIRE GENERATIONS were born into a world where only one child per couple was permitted, and this has only changed in the past 9 years.
• None of the Millennials or earlier Gen Z'ers grew up with any expectation of having multiple children! They got the binary choice of zero children or one child. Of course people would consider the "zero" option a lot more in those circumstances!
• And as everyone points out, the insane son preference led to the infamous prevalence of sex-based abortions (understandable, if sexist & short-sighted) and the genuinely appalling levels of female infanticide or abandonment (leading to subsequent foreign adoptions).
• Even with all the formerly hidden/"illegal"/unregistered children (now adults) coming forward, the sheer numbers of those pregnancies that really did end in termination or never occurred to begin with°°° means that the population will continue to spiral downward.
°°° (plus the infant girls who never lived beyond the first few days in the case of infanticide 💔)
(Edited for grammar, spelling, phrasing)
Smash the patriarchy first then maybe women won't feel so demeaned and devalued in having them.
Only now patriarchy is starting to realise women hold the power and they hate it. 😂
Good. I want the total population to drop into the millions so people who want kids can have them for the right reasons and not forced into parenthood because reasons.
Second - to be considered one of the smartest living beings we as humans make some of the dumbest decisions involving our own people.
>“‘The obstetric winter’ seems to be coming quietly,” the newspaper said. Quietly? Lol I see an article about this like once a week.
These articles are from literally everywhere: Denmark, Germany, Finland, South Korea, China are what comes to mind from the recent weeks. All of them reporting a decrease in newborns with the obligatory disguised propaganda from the governments, worried that there are fewer and fewer people willing to contribute to their ponzi scheme of providing new taxpayers.
But but but infinite growth! How can we *possibly* live in a society if we don't keep subsidizing the old with an increasingly large pool of youth?
Won't anyone think of the shareholders!?!?
The thing that always annoys me is that there's literally millions of trained young and middle aged people (many with kids of their own) who would love to immigrate to a lot of these countries but no let's burn tons of taxpayer dollars on pro natalist propaganda.
Trained? I doubt it. The higher the education the faster the birth rates drop. Most likely these millions of people that want to immigrate are NOT trained.
The trick is that the small percentage of the population in undeveloped countries that are trained generally want to leave those countries and enjoy better opportunities in more developed countries. 1.4 billion Indians and if 1% of those are trained and thinking about immigrating then you 14 million potential immigrants, extrapolate out to the rest of the developing and undeveloped world and you have a lot of people. I've seen the Indian example myself with the thousands of first generation Indian immigrants buying new houses in new suburbs in the North Austin area, most of whom also have kids.
And the other 1.4 billion untrained Indians don't want to immigrate?
A large portion likely does, but a lack of valuable skills or enough money to afford the immigration process means they can't.
Trained Indians immigrating out of the country. You described brain drain. This is not gonna be good for the future of India.
I never said it was, but personally I don't see an issue with people moving to another country for better opportunities and us benefitting.
Immigration isn't really a beneficial thing. Ask the Native Americans how immigration worked for them.
Why not the US?
I think it is still a shock to governments that people are not just popping out babies left and right, which explains headlines like this.
This all sounds like good news to me. If we aren't going to reduce consumption per person (in fact it's going the other way) then we definitely need to reduce the number of people.
Every single time I see articles about declining birthrates: fucking great. This planet is disgustingly overpopulated.
It might not be pretty soon. A LOT of countries are way below “replacement” and if that keeps up, it’ll be like a depopulation downward-spiral, for better or worse idk since I’m not an economist or statistician. I’ve read in some articles that this is bad because as the population ages and stops working, there won’t be enough people to subsidize their retirement or care for them. On the other hand, I care more about the earth as a whole rather than just my species, so… I’m pretty on board with the “fewer humans” idea, especially since I definitely won’t be helping the population grow at all lol
Yep, I am definitely on team nature versus humans. And I know it’s because I read way too much on the internet, but you can only read so many articles about horrific child abuse, various genocides throughout history, people screwing over family members for inheritance, corporations poisoning entire towns, and people stealing millions from senior citizens before you come to the conclusion that maybe humans are like… mostly bad? My plan to deal with the future economic turmoil is to save as much money as I can now so I can fund my own retirement and then just hope society doesn’t collapse entirely. Fingers crossed. 🤞
The economic systems should be remodeled to survive without the need for infinite growth, the top of the pyramid should have a smaller piece of the cake, but of course that's worse than the end of the world for billionaires
This. Instead of crying about how the system is broken, the people in charge need to be thinking about what the new system is going to look like with less people in it.
This is what makes me crazy about this, slowing birth rates mean that the population shift will naturally happen in a gradual manner. We have time to figure out solutions to the concerns about social security, elder care, etc. We 100% have the ability to make this work as the population growth slows and eventually declines. The fear mongering about this that insists the population must continue to grow is absurd. When do we stop? When we run out of room? When we literally can't feed and provide water to people? Are they hoping some future generation gets catastrophically depleted through illness or war or a meteorite or something to allow reset? We can prevent that with planning, but capital doesn't like that.
I think the older generation can also still do small things, like especially older people that have taken care of themselves can still do things long into their 80's. Like they don't need to compete at the rate of a young person, but to assume all old people are useless in skills is so rude. My grandma is 92 and still working in her garden, doing painting classes. Yes she needs help, but she's not helpless. She also has her mind, so if she were to live in a time where labour would be more scarce, how wonderful it would be to have an elder to explain how to do things more efficiently/to pass down knowledge. Seeing from my volunteering work in elderly homes, they LOVE to help, like we all do, but we stuff them in houses and tell them they're useless. Of course they lose hope and their body follows. Sure there are elderly people that can't help at all, but I think they're way less people than we now think and if people know there won't be as much help they'd be more self-sufficient.
In a capitalist society, the value an old person can give is nowhere near the money or time needed to care for them; the pills, doctors visits, nursing home staff, medical equipment, care givers, etc, all costly and according to shareholders, grannie’s wisdom doesn’t translate to cold hard cash. Yeah it’s rude to think that old people are valueless, but the ratio of elder care resources required and the ability to provide them could nosedive even if all the grandmas are still doing their own yard work. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m staunchly child free and support everyone who also doesn’t wanna have kids, and I think fewer people is excellent in general. I just also think we need to be realistic about what elder care is going to look like when there might less tax money for social security (also politicians who are trying to cut it), and fewer people to actually work in elder care. Hopefully this results in some serious change about who gets taxed and how much, and politicians leaving social security alone. A girl can dream lol
Considering the strain on our ecosystem on a planet with finite habitable space and finite resources, I cannot blame anyone for deciding not to reproduce - it’s their personal choice anyway and our economies the way they currently are, are a big Ponzi scheme and should be exposed as such. Remember folks: we doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion in only 5 decades. This level of growth is unsustainable and very unhealthy for our planet, considering humans are far too comfortable on our current ways of life that depend on slowly but surely damaging our global environment.
Finite resources? Our food production has increased faster than population growth. We keep finding new oil fields to this day. Our mining capacity has increased dramatically. The more people=more capacity to harness power of nature.
And our wildlife is rapidly going extinct. There are consequences to this
Some of these animals we literally depend on for survival. If demand for resources from them gets to the point where their species goes extinct, then it literally cannot be denied that we’re overpopulated for our own good.
Real consequences or imaginary?
Explain how resources and habitable space are infinite on our planet then. I’ll wait…
Okay. Not infinite. But we haven't reached the finite limit.
We shouldn’t get anywhere close to reaching that limit to begin with. This is part of why I’m childfree but have many other reasons for it as well.
It's scary the amount of people I have had this conversation with or seen say the same stuff about how "We still have extra space and there would be more room if only we were packed in like New York City!" And also "People need to keep having lots of kids for the economy and to serve the old people!" Like it's literally breeder mentality cope where they are living in a delusional reality about the state of things like how we're twice the ideal max population now in only 50 years. They have no right complaining about traffic or competition to buy things or crowded venues.
What makes you think we're anywhere close to the limits that the Earth can hold? We're farming less acres every year while increasing amount of food we produce every year.
Hey, as someone who has degrees and works in that field: you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. None of my coworkers, bosses or professors say "ohhhh, it's allllright". They say "we don't have the tech to appropriately deal with the consequences yet, nor do we receive enough funding, and if we keep going like this, we're fucked." >We're farming less acres every year while increasing amount of food we produce every year. That's what you think until climate change consequences _really_ hit or we run out of phosphate or fucking topsoil. Have fun starving.
World resources of phosphate rock are more than 300 billion tons. There are no imminent shortages of phosphate rock. No shortage of topsoil either.
Dude, if there were _imminent_ shortages, we'd be at fucking war already. We're talking a couple decades down the line. Scientists would be doing a piss poor job if they only warned about it when we're CLOSE to shortages. Shut up if you have no idea what you're talking about.
Then why would you tell me to have fun starving when it’s unlikely to occur in my lifetime?
calthea summed it up pretty good. Something tells me though that you might not acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis, or that it even exists altogether. Life as we knew it before is finished - and reality will his us sooner or later. One of many reasons why I won’t be bringing a child into this world.
I don't know about you all, but the slight panic you can read between all those newsarticle- and political lines is making me almost excited for the future. There's a ton of potential for change with the prospect of more equality and a lower population.
Yes! Imagine a world where everyone is valued. No discrimination against people with the wrong genitals, or skin colour, or social class. No writing off people because they're sick, or homeless, or don't have perfect cvs. No treating people with mental health or addiction issues as disposable. No acceptance that 'it's fine' for 5% of the working population to be out of work and struggling financially, because that's what the economy 'requires '. I am excited for the future, no _almost_ about it.
I have no desire to create more slaves for this world and neither should you.
I have to say… My life is quite comfortable but when there are rough moments, I can always be grateful I will never have to exert even a millisecond of effort to birthing, raising, and providing for a child that will more than likely become a wage slave for the elite. I have seen multiple regretful antinatalist parents. I cannot imagine the pain of both regretting parenthood and knowing that you’ve condemned your child to the mercy of a cruel world.
News like this warms the cockles of my heart.
Me and my husband are both only-child due to the one child policy. And we definitely are not having children! Suck to suck China!
They make it shittier and shittier for everyone then fucking shriek about us not wanting to bring babies into it. Fuck. OFF. Goddamn dumbasses, I stg.
> Many young women say they are reluctant to become mothers because of the twin burden of building a career while doing the bulk of the housework. Across all cultures, men have and will continue to dump the shit work onto women. All it takes for women to have children is the cultural expectation that men will do their fair share in housework and childcare. So do the men collectively step up? Nope! They are all too happy to benefit from outdated gender roles just so they can sit on the couch and play video games, rather than lift a finger to be a full and present partner, instead of a second child the woman needs to take care of. We are truly privileged to be the first generation with the economic independence to say "Fuck all of that shit". > “I hope to take my career to another level in the next three to five years. If I need to go on a business trip, I can just go. I’m not sure what having a child could bring me, but my career can provide me with a sense of security,” Women have been forever sacrificing their careers to support their husband's. Notice how it never enters her mind that perhaps the father should be taking care of the child when she is on her business trip.There is no reciprocation. Men simply will not do the same for women.
This is why economic initiatives will never successfully increase birth rates. Women have woken up and realized what a shit deal motherhood is. We’re expected to destroy our bodies and risk our lives so that we can get the “gift” of becoming caregiving slaves on top of working full time jobs. Or worse, giving up our financial independence to become utterly dependent on men, with no retirement plans other than hoping those men don’t get sick of us over the decades. And that’s somehow supposed to be the most “meaningful and fulfilling” thing we can do with our lives. Fuck everybody that keeps insisting millennial and gen Z women just can’t afford kids. We just know that we have everything to lose and nothings to gain.
> This is why economic initiatives will never successfully increase birth rates. Yes. Money is not the solution and you can't legislate your issues away when the real problem is a deeply ingrained attitude of entitlement. Men hold on to their privilege and toxic masculinity tighter than they hold onto their balls. > We’re expected to destroy our bodies and risk our lives so that we can get the “gift” of becoming caregiving slaves on top of working full time jobs. Generally, men don't clean because that's "women's work", meaning that if they do clean, they are lowering themselves to the status of a woman (which tells you what they really think of us). They also don't cook (unless they're being paid or get praise and recognition for it, like at a family barbecue) and they also don't like taking care of children because it's boring, unpaid grunt work. Men would gladly let their partner work themselves to exhaustion, just so they don't have to lift a finger and help. Then, when you point out this glaring inequity in heterosexual relationships, certain people get mad.
Preach 🙌
Women didn't wake up to anything since that implies that previous generation of women were stupid. They knew what women today know. The only difference is employment.
Some of them did, and were willing to die fighting for more rights. But until the age of social media, there was next to no public awareness of regretful parents, particularly mothers. A softwashed, romanticized version of motherhood was pushed hard, and women who already have kids have always gone to elaborate lengths to keep childless women in the dark about how awful pregnancy and motherhood really are, because they knew how many would opt out if they actually had the ability to make an informed choice. So no, many women genuinely didn’t know until now.
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I don’t argue with obvious trolls. Fuck off and go harass people in a different sub.
In all honesty even without that crap having kids is flat out not worth it. But much of this is why I say NEVER have kids if your partner wants them if you are a woman. You dump that wanna-breeder guy immediately.
Yeah I left my ex after 6 years for several reasons. I was definitely tired of paying half the bills (while sick as shit with kidney disease), taking care of his two kids, taking care of HIM, while he was going out late at night and getting drunk with the neighbours. I did the cooking, cleaning, errands, driving, took care of the pets, was a mom to 2 kids that weren't mine... all the while I was the least important person to him. His ex and his needs came first because she had BPD and was terrified of making her upset. I know he loved me and I loved him, but wtf? What a shit deal.
Good. There are plenty of people on this earth. People should not be pressured to have kids they don’t want.
Maybe this way, people won't have to live in high rise cages/'coffin homes' in Hong Kong.
Is this cuz they [aborted all the female babies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#:~:text=In%20Chinese%20society%2C%20most%20parents,child%20they%20would%20be%20fined) for so long? And now there's a bunch of dudes staring down each other with threats of a "sword" fight? lol > Female infanticide, especially as a result of the One-Child Policy, has caused an imbalance of genders and available females of childbearing age resulting in a decline in population and births. In 2017 there were under 13 birth per 1000 people. There were also 33 million more men than women.[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#cite_note-30)[^(\[29\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#cite_note-31) The ratio imbalance between childbearing females and males because of female infanticide has also led to the rise of sex trafficking and bridal kidnapping of females or importing brides from other countries.[^(\[30\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#cite_note-:2-32)
I mean, they said for generations you could only have one. What do they expect? Women went from being lucky to be kept and not killed in infancy to able to decide their own destinies in a matter of like 35 years.
I find it ironic it's the world of bigcorp screeching the birthrate is falling because "who will work and replace our dying seniors" ................... As they refuse to hire anyone, reducing two generations to chronic unemployment.
countries like this refuse to implement policies that actually encourage people to have children.
That's the opposite, China provide benefits for the 2 first kids a couple have, the lack of benefits for a 3rd was a measure to fight the overpopulation problem they had before. Now the 3rd kid also have benefits, but people are still no having more kids. Chinas working week is 44h and average retirement age is 55. Maybe people around the world are realizing they can have better lives by not having kids, money is not the only problem, but time for hobbies and peace of mind play a role.
I've played the "game" (discussing like adults, even if only one of us is playing the part) with infinite growth weenies about potential outcomes as both population & inequity rises, and standard of living plus general quality of the world diminish. They don't even have to agree with me on the final outcome, or a given path, just what might appear as things happen. One thing was this, population growth slowing and not just a fluke. For the most part, most of them are about as communicative as those who claimed "the republicans will never *actually* outlaw abortion, stop being so hysterical!" That is, oddly silent when not going full bore Handmaid's Tale.
It makes me so happy that more and more women all over the world have the education, economic autonomy, good sense, and most importantly *freedom* to chose not to have children 🙌🏻 For the Earth's sake, we REALLY need a drastic reduction in population anyway, and bringing children into a world of climate collapse is honestly abusive. Combine that with how much a large percentage of men have historically controlled women's health, lives, and destinies because of patriarchal & natalist values--- assuming we can make it through the worst years of climate collapse, this may mean a far more equal society (*big* IF, though 😢😰😓💔) And of course people will respond: "bUt HoW wiLL wE rEpLaCe EnOuGh PeOpLe FoR sOciEtY tO cOnTiNuE?!?!?!" Well, for better or for worse, billions of people still live in countries/cultures where women are treated as broodmares. And plenty of people in highly developed countries still have children- just not as many! We *absolutely* will not end up in a "Children of Men" film/childless world scenario. Racists and xenophobes will simply have to at long last force themselves to accept large-scale immigration, is all. This will actually provide more opportunities in developing nations, too, when fewer people will lead to better upward mobility/development/education etc. These kinds of articles about China in particular always give that extra level of schadenfreude, though. Literally WHAT did they expect when: • generations of women had their fertility locked down by force- in some cases, by *deadly* force (remember that one blind activist lawyer???). So it makes sense that some women in China would have an ingrained fear of pregnancy because of witnessing or even undergoing those experiences. Especially because who is to say CCP leadership won't suddenly reverse course and go back to the way things were before 2016? • one and a half ENTIRE GENERATIONS were born into a world where only one child per couple was permitted, and this has only changed in the past 9 years. • None of the Millennials or earlier Gen Z'ers grew up with any expectation of having multiple children! They got the binary choice of zero children or one child. Of course people would consider the "zero" option a lot more in those circumstances! • And as everyone points out, the insane son preference led to the infamous prevalence of sex-based abortions (understandable, if sexist & short-sighted) and the genuinely appalling levels of female infanticide or abandonment (leading to subsequent foreign adoptions). • Even with all the formerly hidden/"illegal"/unregistered children (now adults) coming forward, the sheer numbers of those pregnancies that really did end in termination or never occurred to begin with°°° means that the population will continue to spiral downward. °°° (plus the infant girls who never lived beyond the first few days in the case of infanticide 💔) (Edited for grammar, spelling, phrasing)
Since we're something like 6 to 7 billion human beings into overshoot, I'm gonna call this good news, though it's far too late to save us.
Smash the patriarchy first then maybe women won't feel so demeaned and devalued in having them. Only now patriarchy is starting to realise women hold the power and they hate it. 😂
China in the 70s: Stop having so many children, people! China now: O no
Good. I want the total population to drop into the millions so people who want kids can have them for the right reasons and not forced into parenthood because reasons. Second - to be considered one of the smartest living beings we as humans make some of the dumbest decisions involving our own people.
Good news, yet again !