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"Raising a child costs money" is an complete unsupportable situation for any society and represents completely indefensible failure.
We have a complex and frankly fragile system of family members who care for one another's kids and maintain specific work schedules so that one grownup is always available in my family, that we built from scratch (not really from a cultural background where this is the norm, it's out of necessity) and it's frankly the only way my family has been able to support any children.
I'm genuinely not sure how a person pays for rent/mortgage, utilities, gas and food while also paying the kinds of prices that childcare costs in even low COL areas of the US.
The only happy parents I know have family who regularly watch their kids, including overnight stays. The kids love it because they spend time with more family, and my friends love it because it means they still have time to work and do things for themselves outside of childcare. I frankly don't know how the average atomized American family copes with raising children.
It's called the nuclear family because of how atomized we are :kelly:
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I am also unsure if the world is ending. The last generation of humans may already be alive. They may already be adults with college degrees. Mad Max is fine to watch on screen, but would be a horrifying reality to live in.
I do not want to subject people to the upcoming WW3.
Humanity is going to survive, perhaps in small isolated pockets that never reach the potential capitalism squandered.
That being said, if I were to have a kid I’d be taking on the burden of finding a way to set them up for a good life. I don’t see a good life in near to mid term future for anyone not extremely lucky in birth circumstance.
teahc your children to find water by smell like an antelope
The world is closer to ended than ending. More than half of complex macroscopic life is already dead or replaced by monoculture/livestock. Today's fossil record would lbe considered post extinction event to future alien paleontologists.
This is my reasoning too.
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I hate being reminded that it costs money to go to the hospital and get your baby delivered in the US. Yeah it's super expensive having a kid but i didn't have to pay $10k+ to have it removed from my partner
All "healthcare" executives should experience their skin being flayed from their bodies
I was under the impression many people just don't pay hospital bills?
That's what I'd probably do
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Doing my part for white replacement by not reproducing
I know a lot of people who want to have kids (or more than one kid) who won't because it would financially ruin them, and I live in a cheap ass rust belt city.
It might be an unpopular view here but I don't think it really has anything to do with finances. Fertility rate goes up the poorer people are.
I think it's more to do with the general sense of no future worth continuing that people have, and a cultural attitude of hating kids that seems to have built up in western countries. People didn't hate children 30 years ago the same way they hate children today. Children were a part of everyday life outdoors on every street, you really didn't do well in the world if you got mad about kids every time you saw them because outside of school hours they were omnipresent outdoors.
Oh yeah, one thing about fertility rates going down is because Teen pregnancies are way down
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Fertility rate goes up the poorer people are.
I think it's more that families that have been poor for generations know how to raise kids on a budget but people who grew up middle class don't want to have kids unless they can offer them roughly the same quality of life they had, which is increasingly inaccessible.
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It might be an unpopular view here but I don't think it really has anything to do with finances.
The survey posted is literally showing that it is the primary reason. And it didn't ignore your concerns:
Nearly a quarter (23%) of Millennials and Gen Z without children do not plan to become parents, primarily due to financial reasons. Furthermore, 31% of Millennials and Gen Z who say they don’t plan to become a parent attribute this to the social and political world their children would inherit.
The idea that the world is so hopeless it would be wrong to bring kids into it is real, but it is absolutely not the primary reason. Unless you have a source that says otherwise.
I think it's more to do with the general sense of no future worth continuing that people have, and a cultural attitude of hating kids
Yeah, while finances are an issue i agree its more that sense that the future will be worse. Blaming finances is easier, not just to communicate but also for people to wrap their minds around without having to confront the dread of the future if things continue the way they are.
Part of me feels the hatred of children and antinatalism in general is a reaction to people not being able to afford kids/feeling there's no future for children of their own. The way antinatalists speak, there has to be something more there
Agreed. I’ve been a teacher before and I don’t hate kids. So I think the problem is that “I hate kids” is more of a lie we tell ourselves because we cannot in good conscience have kids.
There’s also the fact that the onus is always on women, so we know this is a proxy for something else. If more kids was that much of a priority the bourgeoisie would make some concessions in order to get it. They’d allow more building in “prime real estate” walkable cities and introduce the idea of “community” to America. They’d take a hit on their rent prices and let young people move to the walkable cities they yearn for so they can actually meet people, and you know, get laid to have kids.
But no, their idea is that they want to mandate that women reproduce or be tossed in jail, and further hammer in the idea for men that if they don’t get laid by age 30 they’re a hopeless loser.
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Fertility rate goes up the poorer people are.
People are poorer now than 10 years ago, but fertility rate hasn't gone up.
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Capitalism continuing to destroy its own foundation lol
White, married, make ~$160k/yr combined (pretax). No kids, vasectomy. Climate change and the complete lack of pro-natal infrastructure in our society is why. No nearby family to rely on, and by the time we finish our 8 hour days, neither of us has the energy to prepare a meal and care for a child. I don't really love being alive and I'd have a lot of regret bringing in someone to a worse world and make them deal with that feeling every day
Unlike me who won't have kids due to no game
For some of us, it's both
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im sure the right wing youtubers will be crying and pissing themselves about the "infertility crisis" even louder now
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On the flip side I have kids and can barely afford to exist.
1 in 4 gen z-ers say they won't have kids due to being gay and trans :spectre-of-gender:
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They’re still pumping them out in Guatemala. I’m pretty sure we’re one of the countries keeping up North America’s birthrates.
Nuh uh it's because woke
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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