[dalyons]

Yes, nevermind the most expensive housing, education and healthcare ever, even in inflation adjusted terms. No it’s the children who are wrong.

you might look at the birth rates in china or almost any other Asian country, and see how your vague rant holds up.

[Aeolun]

I’m fairly certain this is just misaligned expectations. You can absolutely live in a 30sqm (or less) space with 5 children, raising them on plain rice, and send them to whatever public school you can get for free. And they’d very likely still have a better life than just 100 years ago. It’s just that nobody wants to do so because the standards are so much higher.

[em-bee]

i agree with this. in a world where everyone (except a very few) has the same kind of life, it all just seems normal so you would not consider changing that. but as some people have less kids, more and more people learn from that, so the idea spreads (as does the education around how to avoid having kids).

[haimez]

Let’s be a little charitable here- having and raising children has been a much, much more dangerous proposition health wise even at your parents generation to say nothing of your grandparents generation.

[dalyons]

There’s not a lot to be charitable about in the parent comment. Some poorly researched race replacement bs?

You personally are right, it has never been safer health wise to have children. It has never been more expensive either, win some, lose some.

[vidarh]

Expensive relative to expectations. Not in terms of what most people could provide.

That's not bad. It's fine that people expect more and want to be able to provide more before having children (and I do agree the commenter who argued this is somehow confined to the Western world is way out there).

But we need to understand that across most of the developed world - there will be exceptions in pockets here and there - it is not the ability to afford children that has dropped, but that we're not willing to give up what we have to have children at a living standard that was considered good before.

E.g. when I grew up we always had food, but the food we had was dictated by cost in a way I never think about, and wouldn't want to deal with. We lived in less space, and I want more space, not less. Our living standard when I was a kid was fine; far above average for most of the world, about average for where I grew up. But if what it took to have more kids was to go back to that, I wouldn't.

The commenter above can call that soft all they want - I don't feel bad for wanting to enjoy life more than I want more children (I have one son; I might well have another child, but because I'm at a stage where my girlfriend and I can afford it without sacrificing our standard of living and that does place me in a privileged position)

[ekianjo]

more expensive than when? people had nothing 150 years ago and still had kids, mind you

[dalyons]

Yes they, and especially women, had absolutely no choice due to lack of birth control and various repressions. A relevant and useful comparison.

[DharmaPolice]

First generation immigrants (in Europe) have higher birth rates than second generation immigrants despite being poorer. It's not just about costs - it's about cultural expectations.

[somenameforme]

In the past, if you could not afford to feed your family, you could literally starve to death. And people saved money by doing things like crafting clothes out of feed sacks. [1] It became common enough that companies would start selling their feed in sacks with floral designs, specifically with the intent of then being reused as clothing.

And that's just one among a vast array of lifestyle differences. Now a days the worst case scenario is that you end up on government assistance and have a less pleasant life. As for Asia, don't make the mistake of conflating Asia with just China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Asia's big, and those places are outliers in terms of fertility, with China's issues being entirely self inflicted. The average fertility rate across Asia is 2.3 [2], which is not great - but at least sustainable.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress

[2] - https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/c416afed-en/index.html?i...

[dalyons]

2019 data is fairly out of date. 2023 shows India is below replacement now (2.1 and dropping). china drastically so (1.2 and dropping). Those are the biggest populations by a large margin. Projections for the region show continued declines, not sustainable at all.

[Rapzid]

That would have aged like milk if you'd said it when the stats were fresh.

The point here being the rate is actively crashing pretty much globally. The outliers would be anywhere it's not.