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boredatoms 2 minutes ago [-]
If I had a house at 22 i would have had 6 kids. A house at 35 means much less kids.
bentt 7 minutes ago [-]
Society just doesn’t expect it of people any longer. I
know many young people who just don’t want kids, and they are empowered to make that decision.
At some level, the beauty of having a family has ceased to be communicated.
angmarsbane 1 hours ago [-]
I asked recently in the new mom's forum at my office what prevented them from having more children. Many women expressed that they would have loved to have 3-4 children instead of 1-2 but that the limiting factor was time. To have 3-4 children they would have needed to start in mid-late 20s but they and their partners could not get financially, professionally established in order to start a family at that age. Others said that the time-related logistics of multiple kids with two working parents aren't manageable beyond two. Daycare, school, extra-curriculars none of those schedules align well with working hours.
bottle_roket 2 hours ago [-]
The percentage of American women who have a child in their lifetime is at 85%, about than same as in the 1950s. The issue is that many more people are choosing to have fewer children. This to me indicates it’s a cost issue, not some sense of impending doom about the future. You’ve already given over to the lifestyle change, the opportunity cost, and commitment to the future of earth with 1 or 2 kids - I bet not having more is strongly financially driven.
throwaway-blaze 55 minutes ago [-]
There's also an interesting correlation between the advent of car seat / booster seat laws and the drop in number of kids per family.
> The percentage of American women who have a child in their lifetime is at 85%
This is going to be heavily skewed by the fact that Millenial women are in their 30s and thus will be subject to various methodologies in how they're counted for this "lifetime" figure.
My experience is that women in the US over 40 vs women under 40 (as of 2026) have a much different view of children and of marriage. This would line up with cultural changes which occurred during the early 2000s.
As for cost, this idea is promoted all the time but poor people in developed countries and poor people in undeveloped countries have much higher fertility rates. Poor people have more children, therefore it cannot be an issue of cost alone.
tancop 33 minutes ago [-]
It's an issue of opportunity cost. Poor people have less income to lose by having kids, so it makes economic sense to have them when you count in social benefits.
Any woman with a stable well paying job will try to avoid the very real risks of getting passed over for promotions or illegally fired. A lot of employers still see a mother as someone who can't be dedicated to work or takes too much time off.
Then you have Hispanic Americans with much higher fertility than all other groups, even if you account for income. I think it points to a cultural problem where some women see having a child as too much of a risk, becoming dependent on a man and losing it all if he decides to abandon you.
In a more community minded culture you know you have a support network to fall back on if your husband leaves you behind. And if kids are too much of a burden you can leave them with a relative until you're ready to take them in again, and you can be confident they will get raised good. That makes the risks a lot less scary.
VoidWhisperer 11 minutes ago [-]
> As for cost, this idea is promoted all the time but poor people in developed countries and poor people in undeveloped countries have much higher fertility rates. Poor people have more children, therefore it cannot be an issue of cost alone.
In these places where people have more children but are overall much poorer, is there a different in infant mortality rate? I know in the past, people having large numbers of children was in part a response to the fact that the infant mortality rate was higher.
bottle_roket 1 hours ago [-]
A counterpoint to this is that we saw birth rates hover around replacement level from the 1980s until 2007. After 2007 we see a pretty steep decline up to 2026. 2007 to 2015 was mainly Gen X having kids, but this does lineup with the financial chrisis.
AnimalMuppet 2 hours ago [-]
There's more than one lifestyle change. From our experience: When you have one kid, you take them with you; when you have two, you stop going.
I would say that going from no children to children was four times as large as the adjustment from single to married. From one child to two isn't as big - maybe the same size as getting married, maybe a bit less.
TacticalCoder 9 minutes ago [-]
People, especially women, have been hammered with the notion that men were evil and unnecessary and that the very concept of the nuclear family was some dark patriarchal scheme.
And now the same people who explained men were optional are wondering why, in the west, women have less kids?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it won't come back in your face.
robtherobber 3 hours ago [-]
For some reason not even archive.li type of tools appear to show this page.
dingaling911 2 hours ago [-]
Most kids were born because there was no birth control.
There is birth control.
So...
throwaway-blaze 54 minutes ago [-]
The Ancient Egyptians had condoms.
lovich 29 minutes ago [-]
They had a few examples of condoms, they didn’t have mass produced relatively cheap ones, or the more effective chemical based contraceptives
Isamu 19 minutes ago [-]
Anything before latex would be a based on an animal intestine eg rather the same as a sausage casing, except maybe tanned to make it durable. Not inexpensive, not very disposable. Not in widespread use.
zappb 3 hours ago [-]
People who have no hope for the future don’t bother having kids. Those who think things could still improve tend to have children. When you live in abject poverty, the future still looks better than the present.
wryoak 3 hours ago [-]
People who have no hope for the future don’t bother trying to avoid having kids either though, and rarely does hopelessness result in giving up the kind of indulgences that result in unplanned children - it more often increases their appeal
I think your analysis sounds nice (to ears of a particular temperament) but is quite easily dismissed as poppycock
schiffern 2 hours ago [-]
>rarely does hopelessness result in giving up the kind of indulgences that result in unplanned children
"Indulge?" Your inner Protestant is showing. ;)
When and where human life is sufficiently cheap, the usual solution is (of course) quiet and unacknowledged infanticide.
maverwa 2 hours ago [-]
That assumes that those people care very little about those potential offsprings.
robtherobber 3 hours ago [-]
A bit too dramatic for my taste, but yes.
jqpabc123 2 hours ago [-]
They lack confidence in the future for their kids.
dainiusse 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t understand that. Do you think 40s or 50s were better. I would think more about all tech being “social prosthesis” and people just have a lot less social life…
Sohcahtoa82 1 hours ago [-]
> Do you think 40s or 50s were better
From an economic standpoint for Americans, absolutely.
Post-WW2, the USA was an economic powerhouse. Other industrial nations had just had all their factories bombed, so the USA being untouched meant there was a massive demand for American products.
And back then, companies were loyal to their workers. Dad could get a job at the factory out of high school and it'd pay enough to buy a house, raise two kids, and provide a pension for retirement. Profits funded bonuses. Now, you've got people earning college degrees being barely able to afford an apartment. Profits are held by the shareholders and wages are kept as low as possible.
The problem is people use simple numbers like "GDP" and "Unemployment %" to define "the economy" and both of them grossly ignore actual purchasing power for the majority of American consumers.
dainiusse 1 hours ago [-]
For Americans, maybe you’re right, but
I am from east europe, WWII resulted in my country being occupied by russia. For almost 50 years. People moved to gulags, etc. But still, it didn’t get that bad.
Therefore I don’t think economy is the explanation.
ksudb 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
fearmerchant 2 hours ago [-]
People in impoverish areas with a bleak future often have many kids.
Sohcahtoa82 47 minutes ago [-]
For me, the answer was simple:
I just didn't want them.
I've never felt the biological drive to reproduce. The drive to have sex, absolutely. Definitely a decent libido going on. But to raise children? Nah. Too much time, money, and stress.
At some level, the beauty of having a family has ceased to be communicated.
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2020...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046
This is going to be heavily skewed by the fact that Millenial women are in their 30s and thus will be subject to various methodologies in how they're counted for this "lifetime" figure.
My experience is that women in the US over 40 vs women under 40 (as of 2026) have a much different view of children and of marriage. This would line up with cultural changes which occurred during the early 2000s.
As for cost, this idea is promoted all the time but poor people in developed countries and poor people in undeveloped countries have much higher fertility rates. Poor people have more children, therefore it cannot be an issue of cost alone.
Any woman with a stable well paying job will try to avoid the very real risks of getting passed over for promotions or illegally fired. A lot of employers still see a mother as someone who can't be dedicated to work or takes too much time off.
Then you have Hispanic Americans with much higher fertility than all other groups, even if you account for income. I think it points to a cultural problem where some women see having a child as too much of a risk, becoming dependent on a man and losing it all if he decides to abandon you.
In a more community minded culture you know you have a support network to fall back on if your husband leaves you behind. And if kids are too much of a burden you can leave them with a relative until you're ready to take them in again, and you can be confident they will get raised good. That makes the risks a lot less scary.
In these places where people have more children but are overall much poorer, is there a different in infant mortality rate? I know in the past, people having large numbers of children was in part a response to the fact that the infant mortality rate was higher.
I would say that going from no children to children was four times as large as the adjustment from single to married. From one child to two isn't as big - maybe the same size as getting married, maybe a bit less.
And now the same people who explained men were optional are wondering why, in the west, women have less kids?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it won't come back in your face.
There is birth control.
So...
I think your analysis sounds nice (to ears of a particular temperament) but is quite easily dismissed as poppycock
When and where human life is sufficiently cheap, the usual solution is (of course) quiet and unacknowledged infanticide.
From an economic standpoint for Americans, absolutely.
Post-WW2, the USA was an economic powerhouse. Other industrial nations had just had all their factories bombed, so the USA being untouched meant there was a massive demand for American products.
And back then, companies were loyal to their workers. Dad could get a job at the factory out of high school and it'd pay enough to buy a house, raise two kids, and provide a pension for retirement. Profits funded bonuses. Now, you've got people earning college degrees being barely able to afford an apartment. Profits are held by the shareholders and wages are kept as low as possible.
The problem is people use simple numbers like "GDP" and "Unemployment %" to define "the economy" and both of them grossly ignore actual purchasing power for the majority of American consumers.
I just didn't want them.
I've never felt the biological drive to reproduce. The drive to have sex, absolutely. Definitely a decent libido going on. But to raise children? Nah. Too much time, money, and stress.
My vasectomy will be the best $800 I ever spent.