[abnry]

>It’s not a great world to be raising kids right now.

It's never been a great world to raise children in. Years ago the child mortality rate meant every family had a Jimmy that wouldn't make it to age 5.

It bugs me no end when people assert without citation that the world is worse than it ever was. One thing to keep in mind is that our awareness of the bad things in the world has certainly gone up due to our digital connectivity but that is not the same thing as actual crime, sickness, etc., going up.

[etherio]

This. It baffles me how people seem to think the world is just getting worse and worse. The person mentions school pressure, only a few centuries ago in the western world many children were working in factories!

[cercatrova]

What annoys me even more is thinking that because the world is the best it has ever been that there are no more problems to solve and that we should be content. You may not believe this personally, but I see this argument a lot, especially from people like Steven Pinker, who then seem to avoid the issues laid out by the other child comment, like stagnating wages and corporate profit.

[malandrew]

Problems doesn't really exist. They are an abstraction that results from an individual analyzing what they perceive to be a mess. When someone proposes a problem, they really only reveal things about themselves and their thoughts than some "truth" about the nature of the world. There are no problems in nature. Without analysis and judgement, things just are.

You claiming that stagnating wages and corporate profit are problems is no more valid than a business owner/builder complaining about rising wages and dropping corporate profits. Both are equally valid depending on whose shoes you're in.

You can also be in either person's shoes and arrive at a different analysis and perceive different problems depending on who you are as a person and how you see the world.

[pmiller2]

Forget crime, sickness, and the like. Let's look at stagnating wages [0] in the face of spiraling education, healthcare, and housing costs; anthropogenic climate change (which even the oil companies have known about since 1977) [1]; and the continuing trend of corporations being allowed to socialize losses while privatizing profits. Having children is also one of the worst things an individual can do in terms of carbon footprint. [2]

Children are expensive, even in the best case. I don't have a source for this one offhand, but, I seem to recall that the median cost of day care in the Bay Area today is around $2k/month, which is a significant sum even for someone on a software engineer's salary. [3] As the article mentioned, having a special needs child can absolutely annihilate a family's finances.

My GF and I have been together long enough to have this discussion, and we decided against children. We'd be jeopardizing both our retirements, bringing a new life into a world that's looking worse and worse by the day, and adding to the problem, all at once.

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[0]: Yes, yes. "Total compensation" has gone up, but mostly driven by health insurance costs. I'm talking about money in peoples' pockets. If you bring this up, you're essentially making my point for me.

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

[2]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your...

[3]: And, it's not going to go down in real terms, either. Childcare suffers terribly from Baumol's cost disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

[mikestew]

Let's look at stagnating wages [0]

When they stagnate to the point that I need to send Johnny to the coal mines (it's amazing the tight spots he can squeeze into) to make up the difference, get back to me. That is, if we don't all die from lung disease from this "London fog".

IOW, yeah, there's always something to make it look like this is the worst it has ever been. But it isn't a tough argument to say that it is no less "a great world to be raising kids right now" than it has been any other time.

[pmiller2]

Take those stagnating wages and compare them to what the cost of higher education would be in ~20 years if it increases at the same rate as it did the past 20 years. I'd be fitting Johnny for miner's helmet as soon as it was legal.

[toomuchtodo]

We have two kids, my partner is a stay at home parent (their choice), and I earn enough on a single income for our family to enjoy a reasonably high quality of life in a low cost of living locale. You’re absolutely right that kids are expensive. They are a choice, and to each their own.

Agreed, there are serious problems to solve (healthcare, income and wealth inequality, clean energy, electric mobility, justice and drug law reform). I hope my children take my lead in understanding why their role will be to continue the fight when I’m no longer able. “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips it’s hand.”

We borrow the world from our kids, and we should act accordingly. I’m planting trees whose shade I know I’ll never sit in.

[pmiller2]

I don't think your choice is wrong. I'm saying we made the choice that's right for us. If we're lucky, she and I both have at most about 60 years left on this earth. Any kids we would have today could possibly be alive 100 years from now. With the trajectory we're on with climate change, inequality, global instability, etc., we just didn't think it was a responsible choice for us to procreate.

You and I may know we're borrowing the Earth from future generations, but most humans on the planet aren't that conscious of the fact.

[toasterlovin]

> We'd be jeopardizing both our retirements

FWIW, other people made huge sacrifices so that you could enjoy the gift of life. You might want to consider paying that gift forward and not keep it all for yourself.

[pmiller2]

My brother has kids. My girlfriend's brother may have kids in the future. We have plenty of ways to pay it forward. Meanwhile, my parents are already retired. I'd like to retire as well, someday.

[toasterlovin]

FWIW, the amount of paying it forward you'll do for your own kids is probably 2 orders of magnitude more than what you could ever put into your nieces and nephews.

Also, I get that you probably think I'm just some asshole on the internet, but we're talking about whether human beings—your kids, no less!—get to exist. This is kinda important.