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Maybe Congress should do something about the environment they enabled, in which nobody can afford to raise children and many feel it's unethical to have one? Just spitballing here.
We are far closer to removing women's rights to increase birth rates, rather than emancipating workers so they can actually have lives.
From woman's perspective, its hostile now to even be pregnant, if stillbirth, miscarriage, etc can stick you with murder charges and doctors in the state can't save your life in the event of complications.
From man's perspective, if you accidentally get someone pregnant, you get stuck with 18 years of child support, wage garnishing, criminal penalties but only civil court proceedings so you can't defend yourself well legally.
Why bother.
Edit:
"But if things keep trending the way they are, the United States is heading toward a future in which our population numbers will be directly tied to border policy."
The pre-trump population projections I've seen all accounted for a decline in fertility and also depended on immigration to support growth, social security programs and other retirement solvency. But now we have the double whammy of decreased immigration, forced deportations, and super accelerated declines in fertility thanks to federal policies and economic uncertainty.
I'm curious to see the revised population projections for the USA out 100 years with those factors woven in.
It probably means all of these cones get shifted downward somewhere, and worst case we see flattening or decline in the line, and end up like Japan and Korea, no fertility and no immigration and who knows what happens after that.
I'm so ready for the US population to decline. So many boomers are going to be starving to death on the streets because no one can afford to take care of them nor would the younger generations want to. They pulled the latter up behind themselves and are already freaking out because their won't be enough people to take care of the older people. Remember, it happened during every major economic downturn. Only difference now we won't have the bodies to throw at the problem.
I mean its not just cost, people have options now and realize the point of life doesn't just have to be about having kids. There is a reason smart people have fewer children lol
Those people have always existed. I'm just talking about how changing conditions are causing people who might otherwise have children to prioritize survival or ethics instead. Authoritarians are always harping on about falling birthrates in the countries they've ruined, blaming anyone other than themselves for the decline.
Won't do anything, everywhere in the workd, Nordics Australia, France. Japan, Soith Korea etal when women have control over their bodies they inevitably choose 0,1 or 2. You need 2.1 for stasis
If you want the number to go up, you need to remove choice from women eg no access to birth control, no access to work etc , typical of relegion and/or patriarchal societies.
That may be true, but who said we need more population? If the declining population is the result of just not having that many kids (rather than a bunch of unnatural deaths or poor care for the elderly) then what's the actual problem?
Young people should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps
I’m sure you’re saying this in jest but it is interesting that the original meaning of the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” meant to do something completely absurd or physically impossible.
When people use this phrase to mean better yourself it really is quite telling…. “Go do this absurdly impossible thing that we obviously never had to do.”
No way I’m bringing a child into this fucked up world
Me neither. Plus I’ve heard having sex is a prerequisite so there’s that problem too
Username somehow both checks out and doesn’t check out at the same time haha
A crab infestation can supposedly be contracted from non sexual origins. By wearing second hand underpants for example
Well now that you have crabs I guess theres nothing else stopping you from stealing even more used undies
Childless, second-hand underpants, in my lane, thriving
agreed. this sounds like climate change predictions. Im expecting now to see it in a year or two.
Stop counting immigrant children and it happened back in the 80's.
it'll do it a lot sooner than that thanks to ICE given the current trajectory.
The whole plot of the movie Idiocracy was based on the fact smart folks don’t have as many babies
Edit: To be fair, if you only include college educated folks as smart then you are not actually selecting for genetically smart people, just wealthy privileged people vaguely…on a worldwide scale… there is a subsistence farmer somewhere in sub Saharan Africa or northern Mongolia who milks yaks every day who is way “smarter” genetically than anyone here on lemmy I’m 99% sure of it. Me? I’m dumb as hell. But I was lucky enough to be able to go to college.
Based
AI can have babies for us.
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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