I don’t think most people understand how catastrophic low birth rates are and how they can decimate a population and put enormous burden on youth in just a few generations.
Let’s take South Korea’s 0.7 per woman and use it as an example for a population of 1,000 people.
Of these 1,000 people, 500 will be women which will produce 350 children. In the next generation there will be 175 women who will bear approximately 122 children. Of this 122, 61 will be women, who will bear about 43 children.
1000
350
122
43
Each generation loses 65% and in just three generations ~96% of the population is gone.
Furthermore, there is tremendous burden on each generation to take care of the elderly. There are nearly 3 times the amount of parents as there are children. Yes, there will be deaths but still imagine a world where there are more 80 year olds than 50 year olds.
This decline is sometimes referred to as an inversion of the population pyramid. If you’ve ever seen those stratified population pyramids where each level represents an age group, you’ll know what I mean.
The “no big deal, we got 8+ billion” is insanely uninformed. This 8 billion can shrink to less than 500 million in 3 generations and quite possibly be the largest crisis we have now.
I don't think shrinking populations per se are a problem. I think rapidly shrinking populations are a problem.
If birth rates were in the vicinity of 1.5 - 1.8 births per woman then populations would decline over time but without (IMHO) enormous social strains. But when you get down to 0.7 live births per woman those social strains would likely be enormous.
Regarding going down to 500 million - that is still a whole lot of people and not in itself very alarming. But getting to 500 million in 90 years is very, very different than getting to 500 million in 300 years.
Great point - and the flip side is that getting rates up to 1.5-1.8 is much easier than 2.1
Child mortality rates are way down, so it's kind of a wash. People are living longer, kids are dying less, population is still growing. We don't need or want it to keep exploding like it has the past 100 years.
The coalmine canary is overall view of "The Future". From approx. 1945 to 1970, most western (and later other cultures) folks saw a brighter future for their kids than they had. This flipped almost overnight. I was a teen in the '70's and we already knew that our parents had it better than we would, and gawd'elp our kids.
Today anyone seriously suggesting that overall the future is brighter than the past gets laughed out of the bar. Pessimism = lower birthrates.
What people forget is that everything corrects. Would the earth be better off with fewer people than now, YES! But recent technological achievements means that, say, a 90% lower population would have it a whole lot better than, say pre-19th century people. Once the pop. got lower, optimism would increase and babies appear and the cycle starts again.
The coalmine canary is overall view of "The Future". From approx. 1945 to 1970, most western (and later other cultures) folks saw a brighter future for their kids than they had. This flipped almost overnight. I was a teen in the '70's and we already knew that our parents had it better than we would, and gawd'elp our kids.
Today anyone seriously suggesting that overall the future is brighter than the past gets laughed out of the bar. Pessimism = lower birthrates.
What people forget is that everything corrects. Would the earth be better off with fewer people than now, YES! But recent technological achievements means that, say, a 90% lower population would have it a whole lot better than, say pre-19th century people. Once the pop. got lower, optimism would increase and babies appear and the cycle starts again.
Unless a meteorite strikes.
Malthus was dead wrong. He predicted population would not grow past a certain point because of resource scarcity and overpopulation would result in starvation and disease leading to human extinction. He completely failed to take into account unforeseen improvements in technology which expands access to resources and reduces scarcity. The same critique of Malthus applies today. We don’t know what technology the future holds. We may be able to harness subatomic power replicate infinite elements. We may be able to build islands for living space. We could create a system that transforms fossil fuel exhaust into oxygen. We can nuke a meteorite. Science has nearly limitless possibilities.
Child mortality rates are way down, so it's kind of a wash. People are living longer, kids are dying less, population is still growing. We don't need or want it to keep exploding like it has the past 100 years.
It's kind of a wash? WTH is that supposed to mean?
With previous fertility rates and child mortality rates, population exploded. With today's fertility rate and child mortality rate, we are on pace for a population collapse.
Speaking of Korea: Everyone wants to live in Seoul where house prices are sky high. It takes two incomes to live in a preferred area. More women are choosing not to marry as they traditionally are responsible for taking care of the husband's parents and don't want this often abusive role. Many men in Korea are lousy husbands. They carouse or work late at night and are frequently unfaithful. As women have achieved better career opportunities many are skipping marriage.
I think it would be perfectly fine for humanity to go gently into the good night. As a woman, I'm disgusted by all the handwringing over women not popping out enough kids. Go shove a watermelon up your you-know-what and then expel it, good sirs. Then I'll hear you out.
Cute. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the fate of humanity and potential societal disruption on a scale that is literally unimaginable are topics that can be of interest to anyone - not just women.
Just a thought
Then make it actually appealing for women to have kids. Bc right now doing so means risking our actual lives, our ability to hold our bladders for the rest of our lives, and costs a ton of money. We get jack sh*t for tearing up our bodies other than the supposed "joy of motherhood". Yeah no thanks
Speaking of Korea: Everyone wants to live in Seoul where house prices are sky high. It takes two incomes to live in a preferred area. More women are choosing not to marry as they traditionally are responsible for taking care of the husband's parents and don't want this often abusive role. Many men in Korea are lousy husbands. They carouse or work late at night and are frequently unfaithful. As women have achieved better career opportunities many are skipping marriage.
The same goes for a lit of countries. Maybe not always the looking after elderly parents thing but the rest.
If you want women to have more kids, make it safer for them. I read that one of the reasons Japanese women are having less babies is that hospital maternity practices in Japan are outdated and actually make it more dangerous for women than following best practice and putting the mother's safety as a priority. That goes for many countries who treat maternity provision as something that needs to be as cheap and fast as possible.
So many males are irresponsible fathers and have weird habits that women don't want in their lives, or they're just dangerous to be around. Stop blaming women for having less kids, focus on making it safer and more pleasant to do so and educate kids in school about the benefits of having respectful relationships and happy families, and how best to achieve that.
even Mexico and a good chunk of Latin America, once stereotyped as a region that popped out babies like hotcakes, is now below the population replacement rate. Chile is abysmal at 1.10 babies per woman. Colombia is below the replacement rate and still falling.
Then we come to Europe. Oh, Europe. Every country in Europe is below the replacement rate, most countries are well below. There are actually quite a few countries below 1.3 (Italy, Poland, the Baltic countries, Austria, Romania, Greece, Spain, Portugal and more).
And finally Asia where the two most developed countries - Japan and Korea - have now less than 1 baby per woman on average.
The decline doesn't seem to have bottomed out yet, except in Korea where they slightly increased births last year. But when you're starting out as the lowest in the world, a slight improvement isn't much.
Long term, whites (Europeans), Asians and Latinos will start to rapidly decline in their total population. Actually, maybe not so long term.
Ok so what's your point? Nothings on Mars. Nothings on Pluto.....
Why do you think you have to keep spreading your bull crap everywhere?
Cute. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the fate of humanity and potential societal disruption on a scale that is literally unimaginable are topics that can be of interest to anyone - not just women.
Just a thought
Then make it actually appealing for women to have kids. Bc right now doing so means risking our actual lives, our ability to hold our bladders for the rest of our lives, and costs a ton of money. We get jack sh*t for tearing up our bodies other than the supposed "joy of motherhood". Yeah no thanks
Today, there must surely be the possibility of developing a technology that would allow embryos and foetuses to be grown in incubators to the point that they would become viable babies. This would completely bypass all of the health risks of pregnancy for women. The only reason this technology has not been developed must be because of some ethical requirements which are probably now out of date.
Imagine you live in 1700s America. You probably live on a farm in a small town. What exactly is the alternative to getting married and having kids? There is no "If I have kids, then I can't [XYZ]." The economy and culture is centered around the family unit. You can't run a farm by yourself. There is no concept of having a career. You can't travel the world and share it on Instagram. There is no Social Security, 401(k) or any non-family means of taking care of you once you either can't or don't want to work anymore. And by the way, if you don't want to have kids, that means abstaining from sex, because birth control isn't reliable.
What's happened is that the economy and culture (where the former really influences the latter) has enabled attractive alternatives to family life. As the world has become more complex and competitive, even single life can be very tiring, so whatever are the personal benefits of having kids in the modern era, they have to weighed against the amount of work and stress involved in having kids. The amount of work and stress involved with having kids has been increasing over the years. It's become more financially costly. Parents are expected to spend more time raising and orbiting their kids; it's even become normal for parents to stay and watch their kids' soccer practice. I bet the advent of Instagram means that parents have the extra work of maintaining their family's public image across social media platforms.
I'm not saying that single life is glamorous or that it's more attractive than getting married and having a family. We all know single people age 40+ and they usually have depressing lives. But giving up single life is giving up an amount of flexibility, material comfort, and financial freedom. For example, I'm hoping to retire around age 40-45, and getting married with kids would mean giving up the luxury of not working, in fact having to work harder than ever with the additional stress of competing in the performance rankings with single people who can more easily structure their life around work (They don't have a wife calling them angrily at 6 p.m. nagging them to come home and help with the kids and stop working on that demo you need to prepare for tomorrow's meeting).
This all assumes that being single is a "choice" anyhow. An increasing number of people cannot find a lover; for Gen Z it will probably be a super-majority of them. Even if people want to have kids, the problem is that they can't find somebody who wants to have kids with them. Many people doubt whether a monogamous society where people pair up based on mutual attraction can work in practice; all of history up until now was polygamy and/or arranged marriages.
Man, I don't know what planet you're on, but there are sooo many young Caucasian girls walking their babies where I live including many of my nephews and nieces.
I don't think shrinking populations per se are a problem. I think rapidly shrinking populations are a problem.
If birth rates were in the vicinity of 1.5 - 1.8 births per woman then populations would decline over time but without (IMHO) enormous social strains.
Correct to some extend. The biggest problem I see is that birth rates are crashing at the same moment as life expectancy goes up. So now you have retirees living 25+ years after quitting work and hardly anyone working.
GLP-1's will make this even worse. 90 is the new 80. Cardiovascular disease will be decimated, diabetes 2 will disappear once GLP-1's will be OTC.
I think it would be perfectly fine for humanity to go gently into the good night. As a woman, I'm disgusted by all the handwringing over women not popping out enough kids. Go shove a watermelon up your you-know-what and then expel it, good sirs. Then I'll hear you out.
The childfree subreddit is exploding. More and more women (and some men) are seeing NO KIDS is a cheat code to life. Especially if you grew up parentified and missed out on social experiences in HS and college because of it. I'd rather be a wealthy DINK or SINK in my 40s and 50s and get to live a good life I never had as a kid.
Imagine you live in 1700s America. You probably live on a farm in a small town. What exactly is the alternative to getting married and having kids? There is no "If I have kids, then I can't [XYZ]." The economy and culture is centered around the family unit. You can't run a farm by yourself. There is no concept of having a career. You can't travel the world and share it on Instagram. There is no Social Security, 401(k) or any non-family means of taking care of you once you either can't or don't want to work anymore. And by the way, if you don't want to have kids, that means abstaining from sex, because birth control isn't reliable.
What's happened is that the economy and culture (where the former really influences the latter) has enabled attractive alternatives to family life. As the world has become more complex and competitive, even single life can be very tiring, so whatever are the personal benefits of having kids in the modern era, they have to weighed against the amount of work and stress involved in having kids. The amount of work and stress involved with having kids has been increasing over the years. It's become more financially costly. Parents are expected to spend more time raising and orbiting their kids; it's even become normal for parents to stay and watch their kids' soccer practice. I bet the advent of Instagram means that parents have the extra work of maintaining their family's public image across social media platforms.
I'm not saying that single life is glamorous or that it's more attractive than getting married and having a family. We all know single people age 40+ and they usually have depressing lives. But giving up single life is giving up an amount of flexibility, material comfort, and financial freedom. For example, I'm hoping to retire around age 40-45, and getting married with kids would mean giving up the luxury of not working, in fact having to work harder than ever with the additional stress of competing in the performance rankings with single people who can more easily structure their life around work (They don't have a wife calling them angrily at 6 p.m. nagging them to come home and help with the kids and stop working on that demo you need to prepare for tomorrow's meeting).
This all assumes that being single is a "choice" anyhow. An increasing number of people cannot find a lover; for Gen Z it will probably be a super-majority of them. Even if people want to have kids, the problem is that they can't find somebody who wants to have kids with them. Many people doubt whether a monogamous society where people pair up based on mutual attraction can work in practice; all of history up until now was polygamy and/or arranged marriages.
You get it.
Being single--this is the way to go. NO KIDS. The Catholic Church is great, except for its stance on having kids. Pressure to do so is huge in that religion.