[HN Gopher] New study reports 1 in 5 adults don't want children,...
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       New study reports 1 in 5 adults don't want children, and don't
       regret it later
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2023-04-05 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | tmnvix wrote:
       | I've often wondered how many people do regret having children. I
       | imagine it would be hard to come up with reliable statistics -
       | nobody would want to admit that out loud.
        
         | adamredwoods wrote:
         | I think that it is difficult without a support network. Having
         | extended families and a large property helps, and as a society
         | we're moving away from both. I can see parental regret
         | increasing for those struggling.
        
         | psychphysic wrote:
         | I agree it's tricky.
         | 
         | Having kids doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can really
         | judge without having had kids.
         | 
         | Especially since you're basically manipulated by biology once
         | the process starts.
        
         | DaveExeter wrote:
         | Some of them admit it on the internet.
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/
        
       | spacedcowboy wrote:
       | I never used to think I wanted kids, until I had a kid.
       | 
       | Life-changing doesn't even begin to describe it. _Everything_
       | changes.
        
         | DaveExeter wrote:
         | For better or for worse?
        
           | adamredwoods wrote:
           | Both. It's the journey that counts, and it's a difficult one.
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | > We found that 20.9% of adults in Michigan do not want children,
       | which closely matches our earlier estimate of 21.6%, and means
       | that over 1.6 million people in Michigan are child-free.
       | 
       | For the sake of unwanted children, I wish it worked that way. The
       | article, at least, seems to conflate a bunch of things. It's
       | bizarre to read.
        
       | adamredwoods wrote:
       | N = 1000
       | 
       | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
       | 
       | >> Focusing on adults aged 70 or older, we find that parents
       | express more life regret (M = 3.87, SE = 0.20) than childfree
       | adults (M = 3.30, SE = 0.39), but that the difference is not
       | statistically significant (t127 = 1.29, p = 0.20). This suggests
       | that childfree adults do not experience more life regret than
       | parents in their late years of life.
        
       | aaron695 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | sublinear wrote:
       | > Many adults are child-free, and there do not seem to be
       | differences by age, education or income
       | 
       | I find the lack of correlation with income surprising. My own
       | experience has been that people of lower income tend to have more
       | kids when they do and are more likely to be stuck in codependent
       | relationships.
       | 
       | My perspective has always been that higher income individuals
       | don't regret skipping kids because they have their investments to
       | take care of them in old age, they're happier because they had
       | better control of their finances and time throughout their life,
       | and they aren't necessarily lonely because high income
       | individuals tend to find each other and can keep it casual
       | indefinitely... I guess I'm wrong, or is Michigan not as good of
       | a sample as the article believes?
        
         | than3 wrote:
         | It is not really surprising at all.
         | 
         | There is very little hope for a free future, and that won't
         | change because too much profit backs it. All the corporations
         | care for is profit and coercion, all the politican's care for
         | is increasing power and grandstanding. There is no actual
         | representation left, and politicians don't see inaction as
         | violating oaths they swore.
         | 
         | The previous generation grew up having certain minimal things,
         | and then proceeded to enrich themselves, and remove those same
         | opportunities from future generations. Generations since have
         | come to find out the many of these promises were not true, they
         | were lied to and not only that, they were stolen from on a
         | grand scale to fund benefits that only benefit one aging
         | generation (social security).
         | 
         | People have choices, and for a growing number of people, they
         | find it would be inhumane to bring a child into a world where
         | that child would be no better than a slave and suffer. Hence we
         | are seeing the last generation for a lot of intelligent people.
         | 
         | The way things are going, we are headed for an inevitable
         | collapse on scale never before seen. A railroad track going off
         | a cliff, and we are racing down it at full speed.
         | 
         | Without the most modern technology, we can only feed 2-4
         | billion max. When things break, and they will because current
         | systems are engineered to be brittle with single points of
         | failure because that is most profitable, at least half dies.
         | 
         | Who would ever wish this on their children, let alone engineer
         | it such that the people that want to stop it are prevented from
         | doing so (for profit)?
         | 
         | Its a race to the bottom, where only the ruthless, unethical,
         | and lucky survive.
        
           | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-05 23:02 UTC)