[madaxe_again]

There’s a really fundamental socio-economic change that nobody has touched upon here yet, as it’s such a slow one with such inertia it’s barely noticeable from the ground.

Having children used to be a profitable enterprise. You’d get married, bang them out one after another, hope that a decent number survived, raised them cheaply, and put them to work as soon as they were able.

Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value.

Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family.

As healthcare, industry, and the idea of the nuclear family and the individual have developed over the last several centuries, birth rates have declined rather precipitously - if you are 40, you probably have one child, one sibling, at least two uncles or aunts per family side, and your grandparents probably have six siblings each.

You can see this process happening at various stages, in various parts of the world. It’s universal.

This is a long term trend, and it has been on the trajectory to where we are now for a long while.

It isn’t terribly problematic, to my view, as it hasn’t been previously.

Yes, it leaves an eldercare labour and pension gap, but if other trends in industrialisation and the decoupling of human effort from realised value continue, this will fill said gap.

[usui]

> Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value.

> Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family.

I get what you're saying, but I mean nowadays it's not like they grow up as a purely sunk cost... A fairly-average-in-all-industrious-matters child will get a job and make an income, and there's a good chance the child will produce more than the input cost. It's up to the family if they're going to share that total wealth with each other though.

In fact, compared to before, there might be even more opportunities for children to increase that "return on investment", if you really want to think that way.

[j7ake]

That kid though will want to have their own family, and on goes the cycle.

[usui]

But then what about the golden example the OP mentions? What was going to happen in that case? Were most children just born into indentured servitude and everything they produced was pure profit for the elders? Surely a good percentage of them wanted to have their own family and leave, or wanted some kind of compensation. The set of possible outcomes seems the same.

[qball]

>This is a long term trend, and it has been on the trajectory to where we are now for a long while.

Economic conditions (real and imagined) in urban and suburban areas not unlike those seen in 1920 (automation resulted in massive economic gains capture) have caused total replacement fertility to drop in those areas to rates similar to 1920 (total TFR 2.3 at 50% rural -> likely urban TFR much lower).

This isn't so much as "long term trend" as it is "returning to the post-industrial baseline"; doomerism doesn't help, but their choice to not reproduce will improve the climate and resources available to my children so I find it rather difficult to see this as a problem.