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I decided not to have kids after listening to literally everyone who had kids describe their experiences and not assuming they were weak, stupid or lying.
even if my own experiences as a child didn't put me off forcing someone else to exist, hearing parents talk makes it completely baffling why anyone with a choice would choose to do that to themselves.
You literally cannot imagine the doses of oxytocin and dopamine when your kid looks you in the eyes and smiles for the first time. All the wonderful moments are like a goddamn fix.
It’s literally the only reason (most) parents don’t murder their kids when they’re being shitty little assholes.
But seriously, you simply don’t realize how heady a hit of emotional bonding-feel good cocktail it is until it happens to you.
And this is coming from someone who spent half the 90s candy flipping.
I literally never hear anything good about it.
It's utterly exhausting and absolutely not something anyone should do without a support network, but it's also the single most rewarding experience in my life. Nothing comes close. Making my child laugh for the first time was better than any drug I've ever done. But unless you're in a good place mentally, socially, financially, don't.
Oh, I don't know. I love having kids. It can be a lot, but nothing really touches the feeling of when you come home from work and they all rush to see you. I could see it not being for everyone, though.
There are valid reasons in the comments here, but a lot of people I talk to genuinely are interested in being parents, but don't have the funds to even provide for themselves. It's entirely about the money. Give people money and they will have kids. It isn't hard.
Elon Musk: NO WAGES JUST BABIES
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Oh you want babies? Well I want trains.
I propose a prisoner exchange.
People don't talk enough about how having children is a privilege that the rich enjoy. Yes, you can have kids and be poor (and many do, no hate to our parent comrades), but it costs so much money to have children and if you do it whilst being poor you have to sacrifice so much that would be absolutely nothing to a rich family.
Anyone else remember how "having kids you can't afford" was apparently the root of all social ills for several decades?
I remember that all over the TV.
"Oh you can't afford it" " oh you don't have time between your 2 jobs" "Oh you don't have a a big enough space" " then don't have kids"x3 So all of us growing said yeah legit Now they all surprise pikachu face.
And then rich parents do shit like end pandemic protections because they're sick of their kids being at home all the time
Seeing a family with three kids is such an insane flex
good, fewer first worlders is probably the best thing possible for the climate
You caused me to look up per capita emissions and... well, the scale alone is rather horrifying.
It looks like North Americans emit almost 10x as much per capita as their neighbors in South America. And this is territorial emissions, meaning it doesn't count emissions involved in the manufacturing of imported goods. (I'm sure if you shifted the emissions accounting to the point of consumption then China would look waaay better.)
Yep, that's my reasoning. Sure, the idea of an individual carbon footprint is almost entirely propaganda to keep people from executing fossil fuel executives in the streets, but increasing your emissions by ~50% per kid seems like a big enough difference to matter.
That and not wanting to bring a child into a country that is on a perpetual slope towards ever-greater fascism.
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I want kids. Badly. However, I'm sterile. The state itself will also never let me adopt children. On top of that, my family could never afford it. Like, what the fuck else do you want from me, Elon?
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Besides being gay myself, I saw what was coming growing up and thought it would be especially cruel to raise someone in a doomed world and decreasing quality of life. I never had any desire of have kids.
I decided against having children because of the fear of bringing more children into a world that's progressively growing more unstable due to climate change.
This. It's becoming more and more impossible to live a decent life even within the imperial core and nothing points to that changing anytime ever, so having children seems like a pretty damn selfish and/or idiotic idea.
It's a shame too, because I like children and really think there should be more inter-generational contact between people in different stages of their lives.
Also even if society wasn't falling off a fucking cliff within the next fifty years, I wouldn't really want to have children in a fortnite/YouTube kids/tiktok world either. Just fully blasting developing brains with skinner boxes and max engagement at all times isn't fucking cool or good. Just let them watch sesame Street.
Am childless, having a vasectomy in 5 days 
Honestly I’ve watched my brother and his wife raise a kid for 7 years and another for 2, and it’s stressed them the absolute fuck out. Totally changed them. I also only know only maybe 3 or 4 people who have a good relationship with their parents. I have a bad one with my own mom. Just seems like you could put in all this effort, stress yourself out every single day for a long time, eliminate any personal time for yourself, have no guarantee that they won’t rely on you for even longer (like my alcoholic sister at 34 still living with my mom), they will probably turn out politically opposite to you (so in my case a liberal or fascist), and not to mention how expensive it would be + by the time they’re old enough to have their own lives, the world will be even more on fire and unlivable. I just do not see the upside
The children must be born. The children yearn for the 
I don't think we ever came back from the '08 crash.
Job prospects have been about the same since the 08 crash: no one is hiring.
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Hexbears when men are less able to coerce people into sex and reproductive labor. 
i swear 90% of leftist men would be down for gilead id they got free healthcare and shit.
What comments are you referring to? Most of this thread is just people saying they don't want a kids and a few blaming it on economic conditions.
"economic conditions". its anti factual, there is no reason to believe it whatsoever. you literally cannot pay women to have kids countries have tried. in the richest countries in the world population rates decline. places with free healthcare and child care and all the bullshit people lie and say will make people have kids. population rates go down when women have more rights and education. thats it. mad about that? awesome youre mad about women having more rights. its not "economic conditions" thats just a misogynistic idea that if you have a couple of thousand dollars more a month you would be able to live out your fantasy of being able to afford having women as property again. women wont have 2.5 kids because half of women halving 3 kids is A SHIT TON OF KIDS AND WOMEN WANT LIVES. they do not want to rip their vaginas 2-3 times. they dont want to have a kid with a man who will expect backrubs and blowjobs for doing 10% of the work they do and wear feminist dad shirts. if you dont have a society that coerces women into to having children SHOCKER they dont have children. theres no shortage of people in the world. it doesnt fucking matter what so ever that first worlders are having less kids. it literally should not be a concern for anyone who calls themself a leftist yall on this issue are indistinguishable from liberals. brown people around the world are having plenty of kids. poor people around the world are having plenty of kids. why? how can that be when "only rich people can have kids". immigrants who move to the first world have FAR more kids. there is non population "problem" none at all. UNLESS you are mad that there are less white children, thats the only reason you as a "leftist" would be mad about first worlders having less kids. you can be mad at worse economic condition in the first world sure, but you dont need to lie and claim that "economic conditions" being BAD makes people have less kids. if youre mad about that youre JUST mad that women have rights, thats it. its the opposite of the truth, and its a hexbear mantra. "people are too poor to have kids in america" theres no reason to believe that the more money women have the LESS kids they choose to have. youre just getting amd at WOMEN CHOICES and then BLAMING THE ECONOMY like if you just had a bit more money women will stop being dumb and give you children. its reactionary, anti-materialist misogynistic, and i consider it a white supremacist dog whistle. AND ITS EVERYWHERE ON HEXBEAR. its not just this thread, this thread is the ten thousandth straw. there is a post like this EVERY TWO DAYS. i swear they are increasing, i got into it with someone saying that people in norway weren't having kids because of "economic issues" and that a 200 dollar a month difference would make people choose to have more kids. its THE MOST reactionary thing about this entire site and it actually makes me consider leaving almost regularly lately. the hitler detector have being going off like crazy.
population rates go down when women have more rights and education
Less pirates means more global warming, so if you are against global warming, you are supporting killing innocent sailors.
But seriously, the reason is that for subsistence farmers more kids meant more available labour and it increased their quality of life. That was the primary reason for high birth rates. For industrial/office/service workers more kids inevitably mean a lower quality of life, and increasing atomization of society and economic troubles just make this fall sharper. In fact, you can look at historical data and see that urban birth rates were always god awful (usually even lower than present-day) and it was rural areas that provided cities with people. With urbanization and replacing subsistence farming with industrial farming this source has been destroyed. The right wing can destroy women's rights, but it will not bring birth rates back. In fact, in will result in less available labour for industry and fall in the quality of life, which will result in lower birth rates.
So I actually have agree with you, people blaming it on people being "too poor" are being reductive. I do think there's economic factors at play here but I think it's more complicated than just "too poor".
I would point out, birth rates are declining in most of the world, this isn't purely a rich developed white country thing, and there are some worrying societal implications to that. And yes educated women with more rights have less kids and that's a good thing, but I do also think there is a phenomenon of women who want children but find they can't for a variety of social and economic reasons in the modern world and I think that's also a bad thing.
I would get more into this but it's early and I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts right now.
Yes, figuring out how to keep the global population sustained is eventually going to be a problem once (if, given capitalism) all developing countries fully industrialize and nowhere has a high birth rate.
Educated women work instead of having kids because two incomes is almost required at this point and having kids ruins career prospects. If it were somehow possible to have kids and maintain a job, e.g. by the spouse taking on an appropriate and equal amount of responsibility, or with free and government-funded daycare, women would probably be more likely (but not certain) to have kids. This can be seen in the 1970s in the GDR, where birth rates increased (at least temporarily) when free daycare was introduced. Also, employers need to give more vacation time all around so parents are not disproportionately taking vacation time and putting their careers at a disadvantage. This is actually, in combination with the fact that women are expected to do most of the parenting, a large contributor to the wage gap; Employers see women as a liability and pass over them for promotions and such because they believe they will have children and miss work, regardless of the truth of that for any individual.
However, this doesn't mean people will have many kids if circumstances allow, just that it would be more likely that a couple would have kids at all. As the other user mentioned, three kids is a lot.
TL;DR Economic conditions matter when having a kid only when the women are educated and required to be in the workforce but parenting is not accommodated by employers or governments (in non-financial ways). In countries where women are not expected to join the workforce, economic conditions and government policy have less influence.
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I wouldn't want kids in this economy either.
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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