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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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I am. Lower birth rates are no big deal now and may be a necessity for the near term, but it’s a worrying trend for the future. As we drop well below replacement birth rate, each generation becomes a lot smaller than previous, giving us an aging population that quickly drops as larger generations die off. This could lead to more disruption, political instability, huge costs as we can no longer afford the infrastructure we’ve built out, and less opportunity for scientific, technical, mental or cultural growth.
To compound this, countries with worryingly low birth rates have found tremendous generational inertia. Once it becomes common for fewer people to choose parenthood, you can’t easily change that.
To me, this is a similar problem to climate change. We’re here in the 1970s trying to reduce pollution but no one cares. Or maybe we’re in the 1990s fighting to get global warming recognized but no one sees any environmental changes. Do y’all need collapsing societies before you recognize the long term trend! Heck, even the “tipping point” ideas have analogies.
If we act now, maybe we can implement some tweaks to slow the decrease or even stabilize it in some future generation
Let me introduce you to the internet. But seriously, with economic forces against having children, education and human rights giving people more choice than ever, and a new outlet with online life, these are permanent societal changes that are disrupting that cycle. Birth rate has never been this low across the developed world and continues heading lower.
Population declines have happened many times in history and were always a good thing. It takes more resources to raise a child then to care for elderly. When the elderly die it frees up resources for everyone making the next generation more prosperous.
The Black Plague, WW1, WW2, all were huge population declines. WW2 killed almost exclusively the best workers leaving the elderly. The result was a global boom.
That’s my point
Your examples are also one time events, vs lasting societal changes
Your examples are limited in scope, leaving much of the world unaffected
One income is enough if you want to like that way. In the one income 1950s you had one phone for the house, a radio (maybe a black and white tv with a tiny screen), one car (mom didn't have a drikers license anyway)... it is easy to put on rose colored glasses but they had a worse standard of living.
Realistically that was the only time one worker was somewhat normal but only because we rarely count 'womens work'. For that matter the effort women hut in to maintain their 1950's house was significant - though if you were a women it was probably your best time to live from work standpoints (but there were still a lot of socity issuse that made your life worse). last while a significant number of women were 'housewives' it was still comon to have jobs- just less common than any other point in history.
was single income really better? That is a complex debate that I only scratched the surface of. You can get phd's looking into this.
I’m not saying that lack of women’s opportunity was better: I’m saying it was easier to choose children in a family when one parent could afford it, when one parent could be dedicated to it.
I’m also not saying women’s lack of choice and opportunity was a good thing or that we should wish for it, but you can see how it facilitated a higher birth rate. We never want to go back, but how do we make it easier for people to choose more children, in that context? How can that conflict ever be fixed?
For myself, I loved taking care of kids and believe I would have made a great stay at home Dad. However among other things, my ex could not financially support our family alone and it would have seriously derailed my career, my future ability to support our family. Now that women have the same opportunity, the same choice, the same freedom, they’re also stuck with the same consequences. How can we expect more parents to choose children when you face less ability to support them, for both men and women.
Regardless of societal changes being for the better, we have lasting changes that will keep the birth rate too low
I'm saying you could have afforded it. That you didn't want to accept that lower quality of life is a valid counter though. (it may have required you to move to the poor side of town which is often dangerous). Your observations about how it affects future career is also spot on. You could have done it though.
I suppose there’s always a way, always a compromise that could have been made.
However our situation was more extreme than most. As a software engineer, I earned enough to support my family reasonably well, even on one income. Our family could afford that my ex be a stay-at-home Mom, which many families could not. One of the benefits was also to allow my ex the opportunity to take the job most fulfilling to her (as the kids went to school), despite it paying well below the average income, well below what she could have earned. Trying to support a family on that would be very poor indeed