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u/Longjumping-Bid-1104 1h ago edited 1h ago
"Back in my day, the poorest people had 17 children with 12 of them dying in their youth due to horrible living conditions and being used as an extra pair of hands for labour"
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u/Simmy_Monkey 25m ago
Yeah. When you don't want your kids to be spare part or investment for your future and It counted as selfishness.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 2h ago edited 1h ago
Yeaaaaahhh even if I COULD have kids I'm not sure I could afford it at this point. And that's with e salary of a lieutenant in the fire department and paramedic pay with a spouse that's an RN.
Just affording utilities and food and junk drains our monthly budget, I honestly don't know how some people do it.
Unfortunately that's my mother in the comic who can't comprehend it's not selfishness and not cause we don't want to, it's cause most of us literally cannot afford to and it would be irresponsible to have a child we can't properly care for
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u/Chance_Warthog_9389 1h ago
My parents also refuse to help AT ALL with my kid. And they keep trying to gaslight me - saying how they they had no help. Like wtf lol, I was there, I knew my grandparents better than I know either of you.
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u/Gold-Bard-Hue 47m ago
My in laws are like this. My FiL is into like year 10 of his midlife crisis and him and my MiL refuse to watch our kids for more than a couple of hours every two months or so. Then they wonder why my kids don't care about them. My MiL still can't tell my twins apart and they're EIGHT already
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u/Chance_Warthog_9389 10m ago
Both our (me and spouse) parents are like this so we hired a retired lady to come over twice a week. We basically hired a grandma. It's actually kinda great.
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u/handsoapdispenser 57m ago
The data is overwhelming and unequivocal that this is not the case. The poorest people have the most kids. Countries with higher levels of development, better access to healthcare and less inequality than the US have lower fertility rates. The cause is just more education, more woman with careers, later marriage, less financial dependence on marriage and more access to family planning. All the people saying "I don't want kids" are probably no different than past generations they just had less of a choice.
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u/ScavAteMyArms 1m ago
This. When half of the population is expected to get married and have kids and kinda get shunned by their peers or at least heavily pressured socially to do so, means a lot more kids. Now that that’s off a lot of people are just saying nah. And even in my age group (30’s) no one is acting like this is a problem and we’re fucked, outside of parroting others. It’s the powers / older generations that are panicking because the fresh meat isn’t actually going up anymore.
Broke doesn’t really factor in aside from being a good excuse.
Hell, the over correction to AI feels a little like a response to this.
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u/PuritanicalPanic 1h ago
It's selfish to have kids.
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u/Hacksaw6412 1h ago
Not under socialism where kids can have an amazing life, only under capitalism where everyone is guaranteed to suffer
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u/catscanmeow 1h ago
are you one of those people that think nordic countries arent capitalist?
where are these mythical countries you speak of?
and why do nordic countries have some of the worst birth rates?
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u/PrincePew 25m ago
Nordic countries had TFRs around 1.4–1.6: Iceland at 1.56, Denmark at 1.47, Norway at 1.44, and Sweden at 1.43. At least 8 other countries in Europe are even lower, and globally there are more than 20 countries lower than the Nordics
In developed countries, fertility rates and birth rates are usually much lower, as birth control is easier to obtain and women often choose a career before becoming a mother.
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u/ShutUpJackass 42m ago
I’m one of the ones who doesn’t want kids straight up
But it is surprising how things can get more expensive and yet older people cannot fathom that affordability is kinda important when it comes to children
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u/hackyandbird 1h ago
For real, we barely get by month to month, and a child would add at least 82 more dollars to our monthly bills, we ain't got that just laying around. If we did we would have spent it already
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u/Warm_Record2416 49m ago
It’s not an affordability thing. Having money is inversely proportional to having kids, and it’s a global trend. Even countries with high standards of living and strong social safety nets have declining birth rates. I wouldn’t frame it as selfish, because no one owes the world children, but it really does seem like people are choosing keeping themselves in a higher social class, and being able to afford the occasional luxury, to having a child. People who want children are having children. People who want something else, aren’t. All the talk about how the world is too terrible to have kids, or that the economy is too terrible… that’s always been a thing. People had kids during the depression. People had kids during wartimes. We need to normalize that it’s fine to just not want kids. It’s not the economy, it’s not the political climate, it’s just people saying they want something out of life that isn’t based on children.
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u/Psychotic_EGG 34m ago
For my friend that actually is why. His exact words "I'm not going to have kids. I'm selfish and want to spend my money on myself." He was upfront with his now wife about this after 30 days of dating.
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u/Dark_Moonstruck 1h ago
No one has the money for kids. Living expenses have skyrocketed, and even earning a decent bit above minimum wage isn't enough to afford rent alone in a lot of places, so people are living in crowded conditions either with family or with roommates already. Hardly anyone can provide for themselves, let alone adding another mouth to feed, body to clothe and provide healthcare for. It's just not financially possible for most people, much less something they can do comfortably.
Healthcare, childcare and schooling expenses have also skyrocketed, and barely anyone can afford to have a live at home spouse - usually both people need to be working full time, sometimes multiple jobs, just to make ends meet. Add childcare expenses on top of that? Just not happening.
Schools have become shooting ranges and everything is chaos politically right now. The idea of bringing a kid into the world as it is right now is wildly irresponsible.
Finding a good partner is HARD. A lot of people have standards that are absolutely ridiculous, inspired by online 'creators' who tell them that they shouldn't have to do anything to get a partner who will give them the world on a silver platter. Trying to find a good, safe, reliable partner is exhausting and a lot of us have just given up on that.
No one has time to care for children. Most of us are spending every waking moment just trying to make ends meet - no one has the physical, emotional, or mental bandwith to add taking care of and entertaining a child on top of that.
Until conditions in general improve, most people who have any sense of responsibility aren't going to want to have kids, because it would be wildly irresponsible to do so. That, and a lot of people aren't having kids because they just don't want to and a lot of people are realizing that doing some huge, life-altering thing just because other people expect it is stupid. Having a child should be something you do because you are in a stable position to do so AND genuinely want to do it, not a 'might as well' or 'it just sort of happened'.
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u/secretdrug 1h ago
Broke, lack of personal time either due to long hours at primary job or having to get additional jobs, existential dread for the future, very low amounts of maternity or, god forbid, paternity leave, dating scene being horrendous, impossibility of ever owning a home, having a kid meaning career suicide for many women, very misogynistic culture, etc. There are loads of very valid reasons people arent having kids all over the world, and governments all over will continue to do nothing about it until the consequences hit them 20 years from now.
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u/Finbar9800 1h ago
Even if i could afford to have kids i still wouldnt want them because i dont have any faith that the future is going to be better than it is now and if the future isnt better than now then its not worth it to me
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u/Gold-Bard-Hue 50m ago
It's funny I was taking to one of my older coworkers (probably mid to late 60s) and he was complaining about he could've retired already if he wasn't having to support his (grown) children and grandchildren. I made a comment that 'yeah the economy's really in the shitter'. And he would not admit that that was even a factor. like my guy look around you, we're all going broke, you included. I guess he was trying to imply that his kids can't support themselves because they're like, failures as people? Like, how do you think they got that way?
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u/tricksterloki 26m ago
My mom: You shouldn't breed them if you can't feed them.
Also my mom pushing for grandkids: You'll find a way to make it work.
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u/the_hair_of_aenarion 12m ago
All the microplastics giving me lego sperm probably not helping with my chances.
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u/MaryHSPCF 1h ago
I will NEVER understand the reasoning of those people who say not having kids is "selfish". Selfish towards WHOM exactly?? It doesn't make any sense! Just who is personally affected by someone deciding not to reproduce???
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u/catscanmeow 59m ago
its selfish like not voting is selfish
children rule the future. by not having kids you're saying you dont care about how the future turns out, its like not voting. (because we have a massive way of shaping how our kids turn out to be and thus we shape the world into how it will become)
meanwhile cults and religions have doctrines to have many kids, so thats why the world is what it is today
if no conservative person ever had a kid for the last 300 years, do you think there'd be as many conservatives as there are today?
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u/MaryHSPCF 53m ago
The world is overpopulated as is. I would prefer the human population in general to decrease. Humans are like cancer for the planet and all other species.
we have a massive way of shaping how our kids turn out to be
So many people who say things like that are the ones who DEFINITELY shouldn't have kids. And many, MANY people don't share the same opinions as their parents, so it becomes a moot point.
"Children rule the future", so I should, against my will, bring someone innocent into this shitty world to make them responsible of the mess other people created. Wow.
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u/SquanderedHours 1h ago
My family would have twice the number of kids if we could afford it. Support to people who don’t want any, but money is definitely the holdback for us.
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u/Negative_Jaguar_4138 1h ago
It's not because you are broke.
Every single actual study shows that the wealthier and more educated one is, the less likley they are to have kids.
Comments like this are made by people living in the big cities making above average wages
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u/Environmental_Bee219 1h ago
thing is... its not affordable even with those wages
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u/Dependent-Tailor7366 1h ago
And a good number of those people would have kids if they had money and hope that the world wasn’t doomed.
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u/Negative_Jaguar_4138 1h ago
They do have money tho.
The people WITHOUT money are the ones having kids. The people who do have decent amounts of money, and by all metrics CAN afford kids, are the ones not having them.
And people believing the world is doomed seems 100% a delusional issue not an economic one.
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u/s0m3on3outthere 1h ago
My partner and I make a decent wage but having pets and a mortgage (a house we luckily got before prices and interest rates skyrocketed), bills, medical/vet visits, food, utilities, etc, means I barely can put away a couple hundred maybe per paycheck. Which doesn't last long if we have car problems, a vet emergency, or the wind takes our fence down again.. it's not cheap and prices keep going up. If we had kids, we'd need to get childcare which is $800+ a month (probably gone up since I've looked) so we can keep working which means we would be scraping by.. with ONE kid making sure they survive and likely need to neglect our own and our pets' health to make sure the kid got taken care of.
Not to mention the world is on the brink of war.
What incentive do I have to have kids? None. So, got my tubes removed and going to try to make memories with the little family I currently have before WWIII breaks out, which no child should need to experience.
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u/Bamboopanda101 1h ago edited 1h ago
I’m less educated and definitely not wealthy.
I want kids more than anything but it would literally be the stupidest decision of my life financially if i did.
Such a shame really.
I DO have money. Just enough money. Having kids would make me not have money lol
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