[ares623]

> 5 years ago one parent's income was enough

> now both parents working

> barely enough to keep up with expenses and chores

> child has no allowance to go out

> very limited spaces to go out for free

> live in a poorer area where safe and nice places that are free require a chaperone

> child's friends in the same socioeconomic group all have similar situation

> computers provide accessible distraction during parents' only few minutes of downtime during the day

> are parents lazy?

[wolvoleo]

People aren't forced to have kids though.. If they don't really want them or can't accomodate them in their lives just don't have any. I've never had any because I don't want to give up my freedom and relaxation either.

And one income hasn't been enough for much longer than 5 years. Especially in housing.

I see a lot of people around me that seem to pretty much hate having kids and they probably did it just because of social/family pressure or something. They always treat them like a nuisance and fob them off with a tablet. Really, just don't have them then. The world is already so overpopulated which is one of the causes of tension (migration, fighting over resources, climate/pollution).

[ares623]

I would argue that evolution’s primary driving force is not something so easily resisted. It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away. I would be careful to handwave away another person’s desire to have children.

5 years ago single income households were feasible for a subset of the population. Yes that subset has been decreasing for a while. But the last 5 years or so have eroded it so much more.

And pointing at struggling children/parents as the source of society’s ills is a low blow. When there are individual humans who have accumulated so much resources that they can feed an entire country for a few days at a single thought and _still_ have enough left over to live comfortably. You are looking at the wrong place to blame, in my opinion.

[LocalH]

> It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away.

And then you strip that away too, leaving us with our true purpose at the core of everything else - to simply exist. To live and then to die. That is our true purpose.

[wolvoleo]

I'm not pointing at them as a source of society's ills. I don't think society (as in socially) is ill at all, except for conservatives that are trying to tell us how to live our lives.

I do think the human population as-is is unsustainably big though but I'm not blaming individuals for it. And luckily enough the population growth seems to be plateauing anyway. I think it would be great if we shrink by half or so, life would be a lot easier. Yes, the wealth distribution is a massive issue too, but decreasing this will actually make things worse. All these ultra-rich are just sitting on their money. They have as much money as say 100.000 normal people but they are not buying 100.000x as many things. In fact I often wonder why they care so much about accumulating ever more wealth if they already have so much more than they could ever spend in a lifetime.

But once all the poor people in China and India will want to have a big house, a car etc like us then we will really have a resource problem.

But for me having kids is not a purpose at all. Perhaps that colours my ease with which I dismiss it. I just know several parents that mainly talk about their kids in a dismissive/nuisance way and I wonder why they ever bothered to have them in the first place.

[WheatMillington]

Having children is one of the most basic human instincts, and honestly it's kind of disgusting how you dismiss many parents as obviously hating their kids. Do we complain sometimes? Yes, parenting is hard.