[HN Gopher] What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to h...
___________________________________________________________________
What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?
Author : mmcclure
Score : 45 points
Date : 2025-07-15 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.derekthompson.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.derekthompson.org)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Mortality salience. Overcrowding, on the other hand, suppresses
| it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| What's mortality salience?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Being aware that death is not a far-off thing.
|
| I'm not sure that the idea is right, but I'm pretty sure
| that, after World War II, the parents of the Baby Boom
| generation definitely had that.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| They likely meant mortgage salience
| blackhaj7 wrote:
| War, sadly.
|
| Seems like some politicians are doing their best to arrange that
| jansan wrote:
| Do you see rising birth rates in Ukraine and/or Russia?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, in the US at least, it was _after_ the war was over,
| not during it.
| behringer wrote:
| it would happen after the war is over.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Baby Boomers are the folks born from 1946 to 1964.
|
| The war is the cause, but it has to end to do it.
| cwnyth wrote:
| Is the war in Ukraine over yet? The baby boom happened after
| World War II, not during.
| rjsw wrote:
| Ukraine has conscription for over 25s so that they can have
| children before going to the war.
| silisili wrote:
| I know this is what spurred the first, but I can't believe it
| would spur another.
|
| Both sperm counts and testosterone are way, way down for who
| knows what reason. People are waiting longer and longer to get
| married, and the number of unmarried people is higher than
| ever.
|
| I think war just leads to mostly broken, single men, as there's
| nobody to come home to.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > War, sadly.
|
| The post Vietnam war economy implies this wasn't really true.
| Also our current post Afghanistan/Iraq war economy.
| toast0 wrote:
| In the US at least, the end of the Vietnam war didn't have
| the same social attitude as the end of WWII.
|
| For one thing, there wasn't really the same largely positive
| attitude of we're glad it's over but it was super important
| that we were there. There wasn't much of a hero's welcome for
| returning soldiers from Vietnam.
|
| Not to be overly morose, but the casualty rates for US
| soldiers was much lower in Vietnam, so there was less of an
| urge to make a big family to make of for the loss of others.
|
| Afghanistan/Iraq were even less so.
|
| WWII was an amazing boost to the whole US economy, and there
| was a big post war boom, from reconstruction, and other
| things. That didn't really happen for Vietnam or
| Afghanistan/Iraq.
|
| Now, if we have another total war, and come out on top, I
| would expect another baby boom. Even if we didn't come out on
| top, if post-war reconstruction enabled a good economy, we
| could still have a boom.
| haunter wrote:
| >What Caused the 'Baby Boom'?
|
| WW2
|
| >What Would It Take to Have Another?
|
| WW3
| LiquidSky wrote:
| It only happened after WW2 because the US came out of that war
| as the only untouched developed economy. A WW3 isn't going to
| leave anyone unscathed and would probably mean all-out nuclear
| war.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Wasn't just the US
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-20th_century_baby_boom
| tormeh wrote:
| Happened in many countries in western Europe as well.
| racl101 wrote:
| Did other countries, especially the ones that were ravaged by
| war, did they have baby booms? I'm curious now.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think a bigger factor is how the war broke up a lot of the
| old power structures and for a couple of decades it was
| really possible to get ahead even if you started off poor.
| There was an abundance of need for labor rebuilding the world
| and servicing the sudden boom in consumer goods that arose
| from all of the technologies being developed. Those power
| structures have reformed and now we are back in the
| neofeudalism model that arises when power is allowed to
| ossify.
|
| There is no guarantee that a WW3 would even repeat this
| phenomenon.
| phkahler wrote:
| What will it take to have a stable society that doesn't depend on
| indefinite economic/population growth?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Now you're asking the _uncomfortable_ but important question.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Really? Because one obvious thing it'll require is about a
| doubling of the birth rate ... it's not about _growth_ , it's
| about stability. At least at first.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Population stability and economic/societal stability don't
| have to be the same thing.
|
| If someone cracks the "robots that can do human-like
| things" boundaries in the real world versus just text - and
| there are _enormous_ efforts in this regard going on - I 'd
| fully expect some tasks to be handled by non-human workers.
|
| It seems a lot more likely than "number goes up" next-
| quarterism driven economies are to survive a thousand
| years.
| wistleblowanon wrote:
| it will take you to "eat the rich"
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| An entirely different economic paradigm.
| Aurornis wrote:
| A stable population requires a fertility rate of about 2.1.
| It's not about growth, it's about stability of population at
| this point.
| nilamo wrote:
| There's over 8 billion people, the population is
| exceptionally stable my friend.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Do you think people live forever? Population growth or
| shrinkage is fundamentally exponential.
| spwa4 wrote:
| In other words: it's quite famous for how absurdly
| enormous swings in birth rate can be. It's famous for
| _how_ critical it is for a species to have a stable birth
| rate.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I don't know where you got that idea. Some species
| critically depend on wildly unstable birth rates
| (grasshoppers and cicadas, but probably also deer and
| many other prey populations).
|
| Stable populations are completely irrelevant at the
| microscopic levels; InBev would fold within a week if
| yeast populations were stable.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The article (which you read, right?) is specifically about
| developed countries and cites examples like France with
| fertility rates below 2.1
| nilamo wrote:
| France isn't all of humanity. France's population can
| decline without any major impact. Life goes on.
| daedrdev wrote:
| The total number of people living in the world does not
| matter to local areas that see themselves age rapidly and
| hollow out as young people leave and they become unable
| to support the generous welfare we give to the old.
| const_cast wrote:
| No it does not, not for countries like the US that are
| primarily composed of immigrants. I think we often forget
| that _a lot_ of the white people here are immigrants, too,
| usually only a couple generations removed.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| At the very least, it would take enough automation such that
| the elderly don't need to either work or get wealth transfers
| from the working population to survive. Wealth transfers to the
| old only work when you have many more working-age people than
| retired people; if you don't, the whole thing implodes.
|
| It would also take a society where people don't need investment
| appreciation to have enough wealth to live on, which again
| requires a much larger amount of automation and economic
| abundance than we have now.
|
| It's not impossible, but it requires the kind of deliberate
| effort which seems beyond our political capabilities at the
| moment. The abundance people are at least aiming in the right
| direction though, hopefully they get more of a foothold.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We certainly can't have a stable society with a rapidly
| shrinking population.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Isn't that the main promise of AI and automation and whatnot?
| downrightmike wrote:
| No AI strips skills from people for easy and endless access
| for the rich.
| antisthenes wrote:
| You can't make this statement in a vacuum.
|
| You need to know what the current population is, what the
| carrying capacity is, etc etc.
|
| Generic statements sound and feel good, but are completely
| useless.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Sure you can. A rapidly declining population is rapidly
| changing. Ergo it's not stable.
| analognoise wrote:
| We can't have billionaires with their own private space
| programs and 5 families with more wealth than 50% of America,
| and have a stable society.
|
| This is just the natural and obvious outcome of what we're
| already dealing with. The fertility crisis is just our
| refusal to deal appropriately with the ultra rich and the
| collapse of our institutions.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I continue to need someone to ELI5 precisely _why_ we
| shouldn't kill those 5 families and redistribute their
| shit.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The population isn't even shrinking, let alone shrinking
| rapidly.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| Only because of immigration. But eventually you run out of
| people to import...
| Henchman21 wrote:
| The population is rapidly shrinking because our "elites" only
| sow the seeds of despair. They only act in their own best
| interests. The commons are _gone_ and all we have left is the
| memory of it. Stability is not on the horizon.
| missedthecue wrote:
| It would take a TFR of 2.1, so depending where you live, a
| 40-250% increase in fertility.
|
| There is no form of civilization that works with an imploding
| population and inverted demographic pyramid. Not even hunter
| gatherers could function like that
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > There is no form of civilization that works with an
| imploding population and inverted demographic pyramid.
|
| No form of civilization has ever had the access to automation
| we have today.
|
| And in another 20 years, I suspect that'll be even more
| clear.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You're answering the wrong question. That's the answer to
| "how do we maintain the status quo?" We can absolutely exist
| in a world where growth does not exist from ever increasing
| population, but profits will evaporate as inflation increases
| and labor supply contracts. As a sibling comment mentions,
| automation will be a component.
|
| Those in power should be building for a changing world where
| labor has more power, the cost of labor goes up, and it
| becomes increasingly scarce. They're not ready to make peace
| with this though (or unwilling to between now and death). One
| of the few things we do well as a species is kick the can
| into the future, or steal from it, depending on perspective.
|
| https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
| missedthecue wrote:
| I'm pointing out that even in a profitless world, a
| dependency ratio of 2:1 is not workable. It literally does
| not matter how you distribute resources.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is an opportunity to see how to make it work. If it
| doesn't, we're all dead eventually. I find the idea of
| creating new life to keep a poorly functioning pyramid
| scheme going grotesque, ymmv.
|
| Edit: If you want to have kids in this macro, good luck,
| you're on your own (based on the evidence). And it's only
| going to keep getting more expensive to exist in our
| lifetimes (shrinking labor supply, climate change,
| sovereign debt, etc).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Things that old people need are going to get super
| expensive with a shrinking population because there are
| so few working age people providing those services
| compared to the number of retirees.
|
| So you're saying "don't have kids because things are
| getting so expensive", while the reason they're getting
| expensive is because people aren't having enough kids....
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I'm absolutely telling people not to have kids into a
| macro that just wants economic slavery to pay back debt
| of all sorts incurred (sovereign, demographic).
|
| Labor was cheap because of a population boom with a root
| cause of women not empowered. Now empowered, they are
| having less children (family planning, not having
| unwanted or unaffordable children). Suboptimal economic
| systems can change, and they should.
|
| Can you say with a straight face, "Have more kids and be
| beholden to 1-2 decades of minimally compensated
| childrearing labor and potentially hundreds of thousands
| of dollars in costs so the economy might get better and
| things might be cheap again?" I cannot.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You're screwed financially during child-bearing years if
| you have kids. You're screwed financially in retirement
| if you don't, because care is going to be super expensive
| if/when the population pyramid gets inverted.
|
| The only way to not get screwed is to switch back to the
| standard non-Western care model: grandparents take on
| much of the burden of caring for children, and children
| take care of parents.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, at a certain point, not replacing enough people
| means the species goes extinct over time.
|
| That doesn't mean humanity going down to (random number)
| 1B people via gradual birthrate declines is
| _automatically_ (nor _rapidly_ ) going to lead to that,
| if we have enough automation to handle it, and if we have
| a plan to stop the process at some point.
| spwa4 wrote:
| I think the more important point is that at a 2:1
| dependency ratio _everyone_ would be expected to take
| care of half another person, either directly or through
| payments, and be required do whatever labor is required
| to do that.
|
| In other words, there is a point, quite likely less
| dramatic than 2:1 where "allowing" people to be
| unemployed becomes economically absurd.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My McDonalds order is already taken by a robot. Perhaps a
| significant part of my aged care will be as well.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| We currently have about 800 times the population as we did
| during the time of hunter gatherers, so we can lose quite a
| large portion of our population while still greatly exceeding
| the previous levels. It could be that we are seeing the end
| game of logistic growth. A decline in population would mean
| that resources would become cheaper, which in turn could
| stimulate population growth again.
| missedthecue wrote:
| A population that declines through birth rate attrition
| gets old. The average age in hunter gather communities was
| about 15 years old. In the next 10-20 years, the average
| age in a number of countries is going to approach 60.
|
| You can't just think about raw numbers, you have to think
| about demography.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| To some extent. But hunter gatherers didn't have access
| to hip replacements and ibuprophen, either.
| missedthecue wrote:
| It's not really taken by a robot. You key in your order
| rather than asking an employee to. The same amount of
| human labor is being done.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think you meant to post this to the other thread.
|
| I'm not talking about self-service kiosks, I'm talking
| about "talk directly to the machine" sort of things
| they're already testing out.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Why is "stable society" the end goal?
|
| I don't even know what you mean by that. Divorce rates have
| skyrocketed, and likewise women trapped in DV situations unable
| to leave has dropped considerably.
|
| Today is far more urban than the US I grew up in. And organized
| religion is far less popular.
|
| Population hasn't been stable since at least the invention of
| steam engines.
|
| Etc.
|
| I don't want "stable"; I want "safe". I want the next
| generation to live in a world that is AT LEAST as safe as this
| one, healthwise, likelihood of war, crimewise... and really I
| want better on all of those. As my childhood time vastly
| improved on the early 20th-C when my parents were kids.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Stable in terms of population, not all of the stuff you're
| talking about.
| mulmen wrote:
| Why is a stable population good or desirable?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Because exponential implosion and an inversion of the
| demographic pyramid cannot result in a safe, prosperous,
| healthy, or wealthy society.
| thefz wrote:
| Not capitalism apparently
| supportengineer wrote:
| Capitalist society with strong socialist underpinnings.
| analog31 wrote:
| The problem is that stability is defined as indefinite growth.
| So I could ask what it takes to have a stable society without
| stability.
|
| I'd rather ask what it takes to have a _thriving_ society that
| doesn 't depend on growth. Extra points if it doesn't require
| population growth somewhere else, such as in non-thriving
| societies.
| sparklingmango wrote:
| Optimism. And unfortunately based on the doom and gloom that the
| news and social media constantly shoves in our faces, we have a
| short supply of that.
| thrance wrote:
| Doom and gloom that is somewhat substantiated by material
| reality. The world _is_ getting warmer and nothing is done
| about it. Far right populism _is_ getting more and more
| popular, with no end in sight. No way am I bringing kids in
| this environment.
| gtech1 wrote:
| Doesn't seem to stop "some* religious people to pop 5-6 kids
| Demoder wrote:
| I have a feeling that far right populism was worse in 1930s
| thrance wrote:
| Still, I'm only expliciting my reasons. I don't care about
| what my forefathers would have done in my situation.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I've found a lot of parallels between now and 1910s-1930.
|
| Thru genealogy I see how families and extended families
| lived together to afford living expenses. MultiFamily
| housing was common and jobs were within walking distance.
| The automobile dispersed jobs and families, taking all the
| above away.
|
| The needs we have now are no longer possible to fill.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| That's not as comforting as you imagined it to be.
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| What about the doom and gloom that people are living? Low
| wages, expensive housing, unstable employment, and crappy
| medical care do not fill people with optimism.
| kevingadd wrote:
| This post gradually seems to tiptoe towards eugenics, which makes
| me a little nervous, closing with this bit:
|
| > If we took this history seriously, we might spend more money on
| not only parents of young children but also the basic scientific
| breakthroughs that would make it easier for future parents to
| have the children they want, whenever they want them.
|
| This is in the context of enabling broader fertility by making it
| easier to get pregnant, to be completely fair. But for me it does
| raise the question of what 'the children they want' looks like in
| a modern climate where heritable traits not only affect your
| capabilities in life but now dramatically impact how you are
| treated, whether it's being mistreated based on skin color or
| being at a disadvantage in education & the workplace due to
| conditions like adhd, chronic fatigue, etc. Raising a child with
| heritable conditions (or random genomic quirks) can also be much
| more expensive than a child that is closer to the norm, too.
|
| I'm still not sure where I land on the question of whether it's
| appropriate to try and edit these 'disadvantageous traits' out of
| an embryo. It seems like a classic slippery slope problem and I
| don't know if it's possible to trust anyone (or anything, if one
| were to suggest AI as a solution) to navigate it right.
| Supermancho wrote:
| The assumption that a war would trigger another baby boom is
| incorrect. The conditions are very different than in the 50s and
| there's no going back. World devastation, reverting to the stone
| age or some agriculture society will not result in a population
| growth for decades, maybe a generation at best, as western
| society falls into the familiar throes of barbarism and resource
| starvation.
|
| The more likely approach is some sort of mass socialism, for
| starters. Even if you had technological innovations to breed
| humans en masse, there would have to be subsidized care. Creating
| a breeding class, who's job it was to breed and care for children
| would require a massive upheaval in the social fabric. It's not
| possible anytime soon.
|
| If it was easy, another boom would have already happened.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| (Purely anecdotally, my own and my peers experience) We're seeing
| educated people waiting longer in life to have children.
| Fertility drops, assistance from older generations drops, the
| village has gone, nursery and care prices are ridiculously high,
| support from the government (UK) is a bit of a farce if you're
| earning anything more than a living wage in cities, the
| opportunity cost of a parent putting a (more developed as older)
| career on hold
|
| Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of this,
| however people know what the sacrifices are, and very
| understandably don't want to make them.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. On top of a
| $3000/mo mortgage. NE USA. When I see a family of 5 my first
| thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded." Either that or they
| have one parent who cannot be employed outside the home.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| Another option: In our case we both WFH which allows us to
| live near my wife's parents. Which means we have the luxury
| of an involved, local grandparent as an option over
| infant/childcare. We literally put the $ we'd budgeted for
| childcare into a 529.
|
| Certainly don't want to speak for everyone but at least for
| us it's an enormous cost savings and is a "win-win" for
| everyone involved.
|
| Another (seemingly less often discussed) advantage to WFH.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| same here. not _near_ her parents but close enough to both
| hers and mine that we can effectively have them rotate
| through consistently (got a spare room and king sized bed
| for the g-parents).
|
| even just 2-3 days a week is huge from a mental health /
| down time / get things done around the house.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck
| they must be loaded.
|
| This is an interesting divide between social media reality of
| children and the real world.
|
| Any parent will recognize that having 5 kids does not mean
| paying 5X the cost of infant daycare, which is obvious when
| you think about it. Infant daycare is expensive but it's also
| temporary.
|
| It's also fascinating that so many people assume daycare is
| the only option. With 5 kids, having a parent stay home or
| work part time is fine. You can also hire a nanny. Many of my
| friends do a nanny share where two families split the cost of
| a nanny to watch both of their kids together. I have friends
| who took jobs working offset schedules for a while. Many
| people move closer to parents who are able to help (not an
| option for everyone, obviously).
|
| It's also not the end of the world to take a couple years off
| work. It's a hurdle, but not the end of the road. Many people
| do it.
|
| I think many childless people who don't spend a lot of time
| with parents or families become fixated on the infant phase.
| They see high infant care costs, sleepless nights, changing
| diapers, and imagine that's what parenting is like. In
| reality, it's a very short phase of your life.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I'm expecting a kid in Jan. It was sort of unexpected
| (earlier than planned by about a year!). I'm gonna be
| honest I had a really grim talk with my partner about
| finances... I don't make tech money right now and my
| partner is not in a high paid field.
|
| You make good points and I'm looking into all those options
| now. I have friends who are doing basically everything you
| mentioned between them.
|
| I do think you missed the extra housing cost associated
| with children though. It seems like many families simply
| move out of the urban core when it's time to start or grow
| their family.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > You can also hire a nanny.
|
| Yes, or just have your servants watch them.
|
| Most families in the US can't afford a nanny. Daycare is
| already stretching it.
|
| > It's also not the end of the world to take a couple years
| off work. It's a hurdle, but not the end of the road. Many
| people do it.
|
| Mostly women, and that helps keep the gender pay gap going.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Most families in the US can't afford a nanny. Daycare
| is already stretching it.
|
| Where are you at?
|
| Nannies are cheaper than daycare starting at 1 kid and
| the cost becomes overwhelming in favor of a nanny when
| there's multiple kids. You can also have the nanny watch
| other kids in the neighborhood if you only have 1 kid.
| DeRock wrote:
| Paying someone to watch your children full time so that
| you can do your full time job is inherently classist. Who
| takes care of the nannies kids?
|
| The solution to "kids are expensive" being to just pay
| someone lower class to do it is absurd.
|
| > You can also have the nanny watch other kids in the
| neighborhood if you only have 1 kid.
|
| You're re-inventing daycare here.
| bawolff wrote:
| Just because something is classist doesn't mean its not
| an economically viable option for a large group of
| people.
| ebonnafoux wrote:
| > Who takes care of the nannies kids?
|
| Nannies take multiple children (up to 4 here in France)
| at the same time. So he/she can take his/her own.
| aianus wrote:
| It's classist that I have to work every day and the
| owners of capital do not, so what?
|
| There is nothing morally wrong with hiring someone to do
| labor for you.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| The solution to "my garbage is piling up on the street"
| being to just pay a garbage person to remove it is
| absurd.
| billy99k wrote:
| Well, when millions of women started working in the 60s
| and 70s, do you think it decreased or increased salaries
| as a whole?
| itake wrote:
| My $0.02 is being a mom sucks.
|
| In modern relationships, men just want to work and come
| home to a cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are
| working just as many hours the men are. Having kids means
| tension in relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and
| stress parenting kids. Even if the husband steps up, he
| still can't breast feed for 3 hours per day.
|
| Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-
| partem disorders, child birth problems, its just not nice.
|
| Then when you finally get back to your career after 3
| months - 5 years, you're passed on promotions, you're
| n-months behind your peers, and you just don't have the
| time to hustle for a promotion if you're time is consumed
| raising kids.
|
| Or if you choose not to have kids, you get financially
| rewarded for your time. You get more professional
| responsibility and career development. You get external
| validation for your hard work (bonuses, promotions, etc).
| You get full control of your own money, without needing to
| budget with your partner. You get to live in a better
| location, because smaller places are more affordable near
| your work. You don't have a 1+ hour commute to your job.
|
| Being a mom just sucks.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| You've just reposted this again
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy frak
| they must be loaded."
|
| I had 5 kids in the 1990s-2000s economy.
|
| I couldn't start out as a couple in this economy.
|
| Over the last 30 years, rent went from ~$400/mo to ~$2k/mo.
| Most critical expenses increased similarly.
|
| I now live with my adult kids because together we can afford
| to live.
| billy99k wrote:
| If child care is that expensive, it's cheaper for one person
| to stay home, unless both parents have high paying jobs.
| triceratops wrote:
| Revealed preference tells us people would rather have "no
| kids and 3 money" (credit to Homer Simpson).
| supportengineer wrote:
| As something of a tautology, when both parents have high
| paying jobs, child care can charge whatever they want. And
| they still have limited spaces, which the highly paid
| parents are now _competing_ for.
| const_cast wrote:
| It can be, but it's incredibly risky for women to stay home
| to take care of children. And, let's be honest - they're
| the ones actually putting in the effort here most of the
| time. Most women don't want to be at the complete financial
| behest of their husbands, nor do they want to risk missing
| out on a decade of work experience.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Men are avoiding marriage due to the possibility of
| alimony, child support and courts favoring mother's
| custody over children. It happened to my dad, my mom got
| over $1 million in 2011 when they divorced.
|
| Overall it seems like marriage is a bad gamble for both
| genders whenever divorce is easy to get.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| Divorce laws vary by state. California is equal property,
| and alimony kicks in immediately (no minimum length of
| marriage). As a female, higher earner, I paid my ex-
| husband alimony for a 1 yr 9 month marriage.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am.
|
| That's what grandparents are for. Growing up my immediate
| family lived in the same neighborhood. My mother's parents
| lived two blocks away and walked over. My fathers parents
| lived ~15 minutes away. Everyone worked locally. Baby sitters
| were always named grandma :-)
|
| Now you have to move across the country for a lucrative tech
| job, leaving behind your support network. You either plan for
| these things or deal with the consequences. Though I have a
| feeling many young tech oriented people starting their
| careers dont have family on their minds...
|
| And lastly, it depends on where you live. An ex military
| friend moved to a shitty town in PA to be near his mother and
| sister and bought a hose using the GI bill. He has a federal
| job, five kids and a stay at home wife. Pretty wild to have a
| family of seven these days but he is happy and doing good.
| Family support helps big time.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| I have been in tech for 7 years and it would be a stretch
| to afford the house I grew up in. Plus the commute to the
| city from my parents has increased from 45 minutes to 2
| hours over the last 30 years. My high school recently
| closed down because families can't afford to live in the
| neighborhood.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > this, however people know what the sacrifices are, and very
| understandably don't want to make them.
|
| My anecdote: As a parent, when I talk to people my same age or
| younger without children they often greatly _overestimate_ the
| sacrifices necessary to have children. I can't tell you how
| many times I 've heard people (who don't have children) make
| wild claims like having children means you won't have good
| sleep for the next decade, or that they need a 4,000 square
| foot house before they have kids, or that it's impossible to
| raise kids in a MCOL city without earning $200-$300K.
|
| A lot of people have locked their idea of what it's like to
| have children to the newborn phase and they imagine changing
| diapers, paying $2-3K infant care costs, and doing night time
| feedings forever. I've had numerous conversations where people
| simply refuse to believe me when I tell them my kids were
| sleeping through the night after a couple years or potty
| trained by age 2.
|
| I think a lot of this is due to class isolation combined with
| getting a lot of bad info from social media. When you mingle
| with more of the population you realize most families with kids
| are not earning programmer level compensation and not living in
| 4,000 square foot houses, yet it's working out.
|
| Reddit is an interesting peek into this mindset. Recently there
| was a thread asking for serious answers from parents about if
| they regretted having children. The top voted comments were all
| from people who said "I don't have kids but..." followed by a
| claim that all their friends secretly regretted having kids or
| something. If you sorted by controversial there were a lot of
| comments from people saying they didn't regret it and loved
| their kids, but they were all downvoted into the negatives.
| It's wild.
| korse wrote:
| Well said. This all tracks strongly with my experience.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I've got one fantastic child, the relief of starting to get
| my time and freedom back is still enough to remind me I don't
| what to loose that again, even temporarily.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The parents might be fine but the kids aren't. I got my great
| programmer job entirely because of anger that my family was
| and continues to be in relatively bottom feeder jobs. The
| trauma associated with living in even relative poverty
| compared to your peers is hard to overstate.
|
| Being a parent is a selfish decision - full stop.
| Antinatalism becoming socially acceptable is entirely due to
| an authentic ethic of compassion that the older generation
| and parents have abjectly failed to embody.
| parpfish wrote:
| one of my theories for why we specifically see highly-educated
| people waiting longer or opting out is that it's a consequence
| of tiger-mom/helicopter-parent upbringings
|
| its a double-blow to deciding to have kids -- a) they were
| raised to pursue personal/career excellence which deprioritized
| becoming a parent, and b) when they look back at their parental
| role models they see an unsustainable level of _over-
| involvement_ that they don 't have the time/money to match and
| think that that's what's expected of being parents.
|
| if we started normalizing more hands-off parenting styles where
| we let kids be kids and don't expect as much from parents,
| everybody wins.
| salamanderman wrote:
| Agreeing with you, and connecting it to the link, my parents
| talk about their childhood as basically being feral. You had
| multiple kids in the house who entertained/babysat each other
| (possibly by beating each other up, but whatever) and you
| also had streets filled with kids doing whatever (baseball in
| a dirt field, playing in traffic). The rule was to be home by
| the time the streetlights came on. Organizing and
| transporting to playdates etc. was not a thing.
| billy99k wrote:
| I grew up in the 80s and 90s. This was my childhood. In the
| summer, I would play with the neighboorhood kids until dark
| and come home.
|
| My mom would yell out the back door when it was time for
| dinner.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of
| this,
|
| Indeed. I have a friend who's younger brother fell madly in
| love with a girl his family did not approve of. He left home at
| 19 to live with her then returned about a year later married,
| with his first child at age 20. Shortly after he had his second
| child he finished university then helped his wife finish
| university and nursing school. They're 37 now, 3 kids, both
| have a career, house, and they still go out with friends and
| have a solid social life. Just saw them this past weekend and
| his son is a young man looking at university, daughter is
| excelling in school, and a toddler (happy mistake.)
|
| BUT! He had a lot of help from family which is key.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > BUT! He had a lot of help from family which is key.
|
| Yep. When typical wages equal 100% of rent, how is a new
| couple supposed to sustain themselves?
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Money is not the issue according to this from 4 days ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44529456
|
| According to that the issue is culture. We, as a species, have
| effectively just changed into people who no longer want kids
| (on average). Changing culture is hard. Sure, every little
| economic reason _might_ have been some small influence on that
| culture but fixing the monetary issues will not suddenly snap
| the culture back. The culture has fundamentally changed.
|
| Just to cause arguments, some things which I'm guessing were an
| influence in getting her. Cars? (easy to get away from
| family/village, the culture that valued family).
| TV/Cable/Video-Games/Youtube? (infinite entertainment 24/7).
| Fast easy prepared food? (no needing to meet with others for
| meals). Computers/SmartPhones/Internet? (infinite entertainment
| and/or ways to interact with others but not actually meet).
| Suburbia? (the need to drive to be close others)
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| "We gave 1000 lucky participants $3.50 and a used bubblegum
| wrapper to share between them, but it didn't measurably
| increase their marginal propensity to have kids at all!
| Clearly the root problem couldn't possibly have anything to
| due with economics!"
|
| It's wild how quick and eager economists are to discard money
| as a driving factor when the solution could possibly involve
| more social spending. If this were about taking credit for
| success, they would be tripping over themselves to explain
| how economics drives the cultural factors, lol.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Did you just make that up? I don't see what that has to do
| with the linked study
| Scramblejams wrote:
| It's mentioned in the piece:
|
| _As Lyman Stone wrote in 2020, "pro-natal incentives do
| work: more money does yield more babies... But it takes a
| lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to
| replacement rate purely through cash incentives is
| prohibitively costly."_
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Cheaper housing and not having to work 2-3 jobs.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| This and parenting a few hours a week while kids roamed &
| learned how to grow up - instead of kids living in boxes under
| 24/7 adulting.
| plantwallshoe wrote:
| Was it a side effect of the war ending or a side effect of having
| a generation of financially stable young men via the GI bill?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The GI bill is American; the baby boom is not. Other countries
| saw the same phenomoenon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-20th_century_baby_boom
| rangerelf wrote:
| I think it was having a government having an active hand in
| guiding society: housing, education, childcare, stable
| government jobs, high enough taxes at the top end to finance
| all of that.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| If people think at all rather than just doing what everyone
| else does. People invest in their future. Peasants don't own
| land, can't own land, have zero access to financial wealth or
| education, so they try to breed because adult children are the
| only type of family wealth they can produce.
|
| Baby boom is those people with that mindset with some sudden
| prosperity.
|
| Doesn't last as soon as they see the successful people invest
| in land, financial assets, material goods, and children's
| education. Base culture matters, you saw Confucius based
| cultures turn on a dime once they had two to rub together.
| standardUser wrote:
| Every major economy was either running at max capacity due to
| the war effort or was in desperate need of repair and
| reconstruction. The US starts handing out loans like candy to
| a) help rapidly rebuild the economies of our allies and trade
| partners and b) fend off communism. So here we have...
|
| 1 - Millions of men with newly gained skill eagerly reentering
| the workforce 2 - A surge of highly skilled immigrants/refugees
| 3 - Trade partners rebuilding rapidly using US loans to by US
| goods (as the US had emerged as the world largest
| manufacturer). 4 - All of this happening with the benefit of
| countless technological breakthroughs brought about by the war
| effort.
|
| It's these anomalies that led to the very temporarily rise of
| some men in some parts of the West being able to support a
| family of 6 with a single job and minimal skill or education.
| jpecar wrote:
| Hedgehog's dilema. Interacting today with random average human
| being leads in 99% to such a painful disappointing conclusion
| that I got PTSD from it. Just being within a line of sight of
| another human being makes me nervous and looking for a place to
| hide.
| t1234s wrote:
| You would need an economy where the average man can work and
| provide a life for his stay-at-home wife to raise the 3-4 kids at
| a decent living standard.
| louwrentius wrote:
| We really don't need this kind of sexist attitude on HN in
| 2025.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Not the OP, but the statement above is a proposed answer to
| the question in the article title "What Would It Take to Have
| Another?"
|
| As such it can be true or false, but I don't really see how
| it can be sexist.
|
| If you think it's not true, it would be curious to hear why.
| ljf wrote:
| Maybe it was the strange mix of capitalism and socialism that
| existed in America at that time? High taxes, high levels of
| investment and well paid public servants:
|
| https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/back-when-america...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/10/u...
|
| https://www.unfpa.org/swp2025
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| These studies never seem to look at time spent parenting, between
| baby-boom years and now.
|
| My parents parented a few hours a week and were entirely typical.
| I parented ceaselessly, just like my parenting-peers.
|
| My parents world was possible because kids roamed with peers (and
| without adults) for many hours a week. This was my childhood, my
| parents childhood, my grandparents childhood.
|
| My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting, moving from one adult-
| curated, adult-populated box to the next. They are also typical
| of their generation.
|
| Parenting and childhood are radically altered from the baby boom
| era. Our birth rates (and youth mental health stats) seem like a
| natural outcome of that.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I don't think that's a significant factor because it doesn't
| come into play until all of your children are at least like 8.
| Nobody is thinking "I'll have to drive them to music lessons in
| 10 years instead of letting them play outside".
|
| I think the obvious factors are far more likely - people are
| poorer, childcare is more expensive, stay-at-home parents are
| less common.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| It also may be the wrong causality. Perhaps when children are
| rarer, they are more precious and we naturally want to
| protect them more.
|
| It's bizarre to me that the piece doesn't mention the
| contraceptive pill, which debuted in 1960, the exact same
| year as peak fertility.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I think the level of obsessive care people feel obliged to
| deliver to their single child prior to age of 8 is a part of
| the same story. You can see how radically it changes even
| with the second child (not to mention the third) but half of
| the parents never get there nowadays and think it's the norm.
| refurb wrote:
| I think this is a major factor to the number of children people
| have.
|
| It's not hard to have 3 or 4 kids when the expectation is
| public schools then "they figure it out".
|
| Today the expectation is much higher on a per kid basis.
| aantix wrote:
| There needs to be a mind shift. It will probably take a
| generation.
|
| Being online is not the same as being in the real world.
|
| You have to take risks, including speaking with people, face to
| face, and forming meaningful relationships.
|
| Swiping right is not the same as approaching someone attractive
| in person.
|
| Complaining on Reddit is not the same as talking directly with
| lawmakers.
|
| Interpersonal communication, persuasion, is hard work that should
| be re-embraced.
| tormeh wrote:
| My bet is on banning the pill and reversing the sexual
| revolution. We probably don't want to do that. Frankly, I don't
| think we need to do anything about this problem. Evolution will
| work its magic and in a couple of hundred years we'll have
| overpopulation the way we used to have before artificial
| fertilizer.
| mcoliver wrote:
| Having children younger. This builds villages and generates the
| community flywheel. The problem now is that it's close to
| impossible for the vast majority of younger people to buy a home
| with a single income. So the choice becomes dual income and farm
| out the raising of your children (requires even more money and
| negates the benefits of enjoying your children which is part of
| the reason to have them in the first place), or delay having
| children until you are financially secure. Couple this with the
| constant inundation of social media and the myriad experiences
| available with the click of a button and people are simply taking
| the short term gratification route.
|
| Society needs to change and we need to incentivize it.
| msgodel wrote:
| Older generations need to be more comfortable with their kids
| getting married and having children before moving out.
| endtime wrote:
| In terms of incentives, Hungary has attempted this with tax
| policy:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_policy_in_Hungary
|
| Seems to be working!
| more_corn wrote:
| Hope. Hope that the world was on track to be better and better.
| Faith that people would do the right thing. Confidence that good
| would triumph over evil.
|
| We have none of those things at present.
| zebomon wrote:
| Good read. I've been reflecting recently on the idea of demand-
| side economic growth as something that happens across two
| variables: consumption and reproduction. Until very recently in
| history, only the reproduction variable ever moved the big number
| much at all. It could be that as each of our own energy needs
| continues to increase, especially as compute-hungry AI
| proliferates and personalized medicine extends lifespans, it
| becomes culturally more normal for populations to fall.
|
| Though as others have pointed out, nothing about our society
| seems to be set up to accommodate that at all, which makes it
| terrifying.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| As a new parent, it's money. Daycare costs $400 USD per week in
| my area, from 7am-6pm, 5 days a week.
|
| So for one child that is roughly 20,000 USD annually.
|
| Once you hit the 3-5 kid mark, it usually does not make sense for
| the spouse to work, unless they are earning well above 6 figures.
|
| So then you're going down to one income supporting a family of
| 3-5. That's risky for a variety of reasons.
|
| If you want actual actions congress can take:
|
| 1. Expand limits on the dependent HSA account to allow more than
| 5,000 annually. Daycare alone is much more than 5,000 USD, it
| seems making that completely tax free will help.
|
| 2. Subsidize the entire cost of daycare. This will never happen
| but by golly it will work.
| floren wrote:
| How fast are you popping out those kids to have more than 2
| children in daycare rather than free public school?
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| What caused the baby boom was post-war catholics.
|
| What would cause another baby boom would be a recovery of
| catholic cultural confidence.
| hluska wrote:
| My grandmother passed away almost ten years ago in her late
| nineties. She was born in the 1920s and was a teenager when ww2
| broke out.
|
| One of her memories is interesting and very relevant. There were
| a lot of soldiers trained in Canada and the government put on
| dances to entertain them. Had my gram or of her sisters asked to
| go to a dance with a bunch of soldiers in 1936, they would have
| been locked in a barn while he burned something down. But by
| 1939, it was his patriotic duty and he'd buy his girls dresses
| and take them to the dances.
|
| When my Gram was in her nineties, she would talk about the
| soldiers, the music and the dances. Then she'd start to glow and
| her neck would turn red. Romance of the times is a comfortable
| euphemism. :)
| goalieca wrote:
| It's a cultural problem. Poor people and poor countries are
| having more babies on average.
| vander_elst wrote:
| I think the article makes sense for me. IMO, a 10x decrease in
| mental load at an affordable price would be the key. Examples: *
| You can bring and pick up the kids at the daycare/babysitter
| every day of the week, every time of the day. * Household chores
| take at most 10 minutes a week. * High quality school and
| education standards are available everywhere (Probably there's
| more) I think that if such problems would be cracked more people
| might consider having more kids. I think at the moment these
| problems are easily solvable with a lot of money, so it would
| seem that kids have become a luxury good. So affordable support
| for the masses might be an answer.
| spwa4 wrote:
| How about: recreate the actual policy that created the baby
| boom in the first place? Make child allowance such that 3 kids
| means 20 years of 20% over supermarket wages. Either for women
| alone, or for a family. In other words: 3 kids? Have a "free"
| stay-at-home parent.
| metalrain wrote:
| I think it's about social acceptance. People give up their money
| and time to have children.
|
| Please make them feel good for it. Make it desirable.
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| Single income family cost of living is the secret sauce.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Now we have a dual income trap that doesn't cover things. My
| poor CEO had to join a 3rd board of directors just to make ends
| meet
| supportengineer wrote:
| Snark aside, I actually believe that could happen, especially
| if they're putting kids through college.
| thefz wrote:
| It is OK to thin our numbers!
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I dislike the premise here. It assumes we want another baby boom.
| There are 8.2 Billion humans on Earth. We do not need another
| "boom." A 7% increase in birthdate would be disasterous. Define
| Boomers and the boom:
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers)
| Yizahi wrote:
| War, duh. No, really, the only reason for that happening was a
| total war. War caused devastated countries to collectively sign
| Bretton-Woods which affirmed USD as a reference currency and
| allowed USA to externalize a lot of it's issue, both immediate
| and future. Allowing this externalization, plus major political
| influence in the first decades after the war, plus rapid
| innovation accelerated by the war allowed USA to become filthy
| rich, which allowed Homer Simpson to afford a mansion, car and 4
| jobless dependents on a single government job.
|
| Unfortunately the rapid global development means that even new
| world war wouldn't replicate this period. Train has left, bye
| bye, and won't return in our lifetimes. We need to adapt.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Recent wars haven't been expensive enough: World War II was
| significantly more expensive for the U.S. than the Gulf War.
| The Gulf War cost roughly $60-$70 billion (in 1990s dollars).
| In contrast, World War II cost the U.S. over $4 trillion when
| adjusted for inflation to today's dollars.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| It's not the cost itself. 40 PERCENT of GDP went toward war
| production in the 1940s. Almost half of everything we
| produced was to win the war. The other 60 percent largely
| went to feeding and clothing and housing the people working
| on the war effort, and keeping the lights on, etc. since they
| were no longer producing those things.
|
| Everyone in the whole society was literally working on the
| same thing toward the same goal at the same time. There's
| simply no comparison with that to anything we've experienced
| since then. That kind of thing can't be measured in dollars.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much,
| and they've been separated by war, they come back to each other
| afterward and reaffirm their exuberance for life and become
| mommies and daddies.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Vaccines and antibiotics, freedom, and teenagers with cars, plus
| optimism after 16 years of depression and war, but no birth
| control pill yet.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Baby booms are the natural consequence of mass deaths. The day
| WW1 ended, people were copulating in the streets of London.
| ako wrote:
| Not of mass deaths, but the hope of a good future.
| downrightmike wrote:
| trauma
| supportengineer wrote:
| Uh, do you mean that figuratively or literally?
| ge96 wrote:
| Idk if it's ADD or just being poor for so long. I can't imagine
| taking care of someone (a child) for 18 years. My life is so
| unstable. So I probably won't have children. I think about it but
| yeah. It's crazy to remember how stable your life was to get
| through 12 years of school/maybe college.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I have two teenagers and they are wonderful. But the world is NOT
| the same anymore. In the current moment, I would really think
| twice before bringing any more kids into this world. I feel sorry
| for everyone coming of age at this time. The world got very bad
| very quickly. There's no jobs, no one can afford a house,
| healthcare, or retirement, and the climate is toast.
| bpbp-mango wrote:
| What a ridiculous attitude. The world will always have problems
| you cannot control. People have been having babies in all sorts
| of adversity for all of history.
| triceratops wrote:
| > People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity
| for all of history
|
| But they didn't know how screwed they were.
| floren wrote:
| I think literal chattel slaves knew they were pretty bad
| off but they still had kids.
|
| (If you implied sarcasm I apologize, it's extremely hard to
| tell when dealing with HN posters)
| triceratops wrote:
| I encourage you to do some research about this. I did and
| I wish I had not.
| floren wrote:
| Your assertion is that 100% of children born to enslaved
| women were the result of non-consensual "breeding" by
| their owners? I assume this is what you were alluding to,
| as the topic is one of the first results when searching
| for information about the children of slaves... followed
| immediately by other sources such as
| https://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/
| which directly cite slave narratives talking about actual
| relationships and families which were formed despite
| these monstrous practices.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Because things are supposedly "normal", or happened "for all
| of history" it doesn't make it right or moral in any way.
|
| I expect better, more thoughtful replies on HN than this.
| bpbp-mango wrote:
| having kids is, by default, right and moral.
| louwrentius wrote:
| You made that up. It's very easy to think of
| circumstances where it would be very immoral because of
| all the suffering the children will have to endure.
| anonymars wrote:
| Why is this ridiculous? If the topic is about the baby boom,
| surely "optimism" at the end of WWII plays a big role.
| (Unsurprisingly, birth rates during the Great Depression had
| plummeted)
| anon291 wrote:
| The entire male populace suffered from PTSD, and
| substantial portions from combat induced disability. My
| goodness... If that's optimism imagine today.
| qq66 wrote:
| Of the 110 billion people to have ever been born, maybe 2
| billion have been born into more comfortable circumstances than
| the median child born in the United States today.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| That's an argument for antinatalism, not an argument for how
| good it is today.
| malwrar wrote:
| Were those children born to brave parents who made a choice
| to selflessly sacrifice to do their societal duty, or could
| it be that having sex is fun and only relatively recently
| have we managed to figure out how to do it without risking
| pregnancy? Given individual choice, would we have such a
| large population to begin with?
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| yeah but compared to the entirity of human history, its still
| pretty good. Like, I prefer the era I grew up in but so does my
| dad probably, so its hard to work out if its just a "when I
| were young and could run a mile without wheezing thing". i.e.
| We could paint similar tales of woe during the cold war about
| the uncertainty of the future.
|
| But that aside, I can live out my life in considerable security
| in the western world, earn enough to never go hungry and if I'm
| smart enough I can learn a skill or forge out some opportunity
| that gets me enough dollar to join the asset class. That's some
| real post 1950s opportunity for most people. Bear in mind that
| post-war rationing meant many people in Europe rarely ate meat.
| You could eat a burger for every meal today, even on a
| relatively low budget.
|
| I think many of us underestimate the opulence of our society.
| Take anyone from the pre-1950s to a supermarket and watch them
| lose it at how incredibly bourgeois that shit is. Show any non-
| elite from the 2nd or 3rd world in the late 20th century that
| you have your OWN ROOM or maybe even OWN BATHROOM! That's
| proper living. My gramma would always whine about how they were
| like 8 to a bed or whatever during the war. Single paned
| windows, cold af. My eastern european grandparents didn't even
| have running hot water (which was an alien experience to me)
| and heated their place by going to the forest and chopping
| wood.
|
| Even 80s or 90s kids would be exceptionally envious at the
| incredible access to entertainment and software of this era.
| Figure how spoiled a society is when it buys dreams of a
| violent world (fortnite, game of thrones, gta) because its own
| world is so secure that is doesn't have a grasp of how
| harrowing that shit is. My western euro grand parents who
| survived the war only wanted a sunny day, a patch of grass to
| sit on and some peace and quiet, and we have ample supply of
| that, even today.
| anon291 wrote:
| The world is amazing and AC exists.
|
| But the idiopathic depression of the modern era is certainly
| interesting. Doubtful it can be studied before natural
| selection exacts its ruthless revenge
| beefnugs wrote:
| I used to be really angry at parents, thinking it was
| incredible cruelty to throw children into a world without
| teaching them just how hard capitalism is going to try and
| wreck them. But i guess it didn't "used" to be this bad, you
| used to be able to afford rent i guess.
|
| But still, we need to be teaching above all the other dumb shit
| thats happening in school: how capitalism hates them. How you
| need to eliminate middle men, having a regular wage means you
| are going to be an oppressed slave for life. You need to come
| up with your own thing, that you own and control and get to do
| some kind of negotiating for its value. You need to invest in
| things that can be used to make money in the future, little
| side hustles always. And maybe even deep dives on how crime
| really does pay, and if not figure one out yourself at least
| know the huge majority of people that are going to try and scam
| you. It is pure evil not to teach reality in high school
| jpm_sd wrote:
| I think this idea that we need more people is completely bonkers.
| Look at the housing market in any developed country; overcrowding
| at tourist destinations around the world; environmental impact of
| resource extraction, plastics manufacturing, fossil fuel
| consumption. There are WAY TOO MANY people in the world already.
| We had thriving communities with <1B people on the planet, we
| certainly don't need to go rocketing past 10B.
| itake wrote:
| My $0.02 is being a mom sucks.
|
| In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a
| cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are working just as
| many hours the men are. Having kids means tension in
| relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and stress parenting
| kids. Even if the husband steps up, he still can't breast feed
| for 3 hours per day.
|
| Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-partem
| disorders, child birth problems, its just not nice.
|
| Then when you finally get back to your career after 3 months - 5
| years, you're passed on promotions, you're n-months behind your
| peers, and you just don't have the time to hustle for a promotion
| if you're time is consumed raising kids.
|
| Or if you choose not to have kids, you get financially rewarded
| for your time. You get more professional responsibility and
| career development. You get external validation for your hard
| work (bonuses, promotions, etc). You get full control of your own
| money, without needing to negotiate spending your partner's
| money. You get to live in a better location, because smaller
| places are more affordable near your work. You don't have a 1+
| hour commute to your job.
|
| Being a mom just sucks.
| PakistaniDenzel wrote:
| No - being a mom and having to work full time sucks. Being a
| full time mom probably isn't that bad.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Some Women who are full time mothers report feeling isolated.
| Many chose to keep their job even if all the money goes to
| day care.
| beefnugs wrote:
| All modern problems are capitalism problems
| dividefuel wrote:
| If you read forums of new parents (e.g. parenting
| subreddits), the common consensus is that being a stay at
| home parent is far harder than a job.
| risyachka wrote:
| Everything worth doing is hard.
| itake wrote:
| In many HCOL cities, for many couples, SAHM isn't a
| financially feasible option.
|
| Also, as a full-time mom, you've given up autonomy to your
| husband (since he controls the finances). While women can
| leave the relationship whenever they want, their careers
| often suffer, and they can't just pick up where they left
| off.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Women can leave and get alimony, child support, and often
| times greater custody of the kids.
|
| Men don't want to take that risk, so many men opt out of
| marriage as well.
| itake wrote:
| Alimony is temporary and fixed, whereas careers are not
| only life-long, but have compounding growth.
|
| There is a significant financial gap between a divorced
| woman in her 50s with only five years of alimony
| remaining and a career woman in her 50s with a $400,000
| 401(k) balance.
| lisbbb wrote:
| You all created this economic disaster with high taxes and
| high cost of living via your voting patterns and you own it
| now. I'm sure I'll be downvoted to hell for saying this,
| but it is, in fact, the truth.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The newborn phase is still pretty uniquely brutal compared to
| most jobs.
| qmr wrote:
| > unpaid labor
|
| I have never expected to be paid for raising my children.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| Yes of course being a mom AND WORKING A FULLTIME JOB sucks
| because doing anything that effortful and working a job sucks.
|
| Drinking beer and playing video games for 10 hours a day AND
| WORKING A FULLTIME JOB would also suck.
|
| From everything I hear, being a mom is pretty awesome and
| rewarding.
|
| But there are only 24 hours in a day and you can't have
| everything and you have to choose what is most important.
| Welcome to life.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > From everything I hear, being a mom is pretty awesome and
| rewarding.
|
| Then you don't even read _magazines_ , let alone mom forums,
| or attend playgroup, or basically hear anything.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Not convinced that this is down to women. In my personal
| experience women want to have kids wayyyy more than men it is
| the men who are refusing them or want to delay. In fact I would
| say this is basically everyone I know, the men are the ones
| being anti-natal while women want kids way earlier.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I think it depends on age.
|
| Men in their 20ies don't want kids because they still want to
| enjoy life without responsibility, but by the time they are
| in their 30ies they are ready to settle down and the idea of
| having a family becomes more and more appealing.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Yes and that is too late and in the meantime have wasted 10
| fertile years of 2 or 3 female partners.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| Same boat. I know a number of women who couldn't find
| partners who both wanted kids and could pay half the bills so
| those women are now freezing their eggs or pursuing single
| motherhood by choice. Of the woman I know who are married,
| all of them had to talk their husbands into the first child
| and second child.
| itake wrote:
| My sister is one of these cases. My take is the bar for
| marriage / life partner is really really high in modern
| relationships. Women aren't able to attract the mates they
| want, so they would rather try to do it on their own or
| wait, than "settle" for a guy that isn't meeting their
| standards.
|
| The female dating coach Logan Ury wrote a book called "How
| not to die alone" which discusses this issue.
| triceratops wrote:
| > In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home
| to a cooked meal and clean house
|
| As a man in a "modern relationship" I strenuously object to
| this. I mean yeah I want that (who wouldn't?), but I know I'm
| not going to get it because my partner has a job too so we have
| to help each other.
|
| Literally every one of my married male friends also regularly
| cooks and cleans.
| itake wrote:
| Some men are stepping up. but others aren't.
|
| Many women don't want to have kids because they can't find a
| qualified partner they feel will be a good dad and good
| husband.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| So does my teenager, that doesn't make them an equal partner.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Since you're posting on Hacker News you're probably in a
| pretty high income bracket, and your married male friends
| probably are as well. High income brackets have seen pretty
| steady marriage rates, and as someone also in this bubble,
| they tend also to have men with more egalitarian views on
| marriage. But the flipside is that high-earners tend to delay
| childbirth-- they have to, because you need a lengthy period
| of education and work experience to get to that high bracket.
|
| It's lower income brackets where marriage rates are really
| collapsing. A lot of this is economic-- the earnings
| potential for lower-class men has eroded-- but it's also the
| men in these income brackets tend not to have adopted upper-
| class views on egalitarian partnerships, and their potential
| partners aren't having it.
|
| So among high earners you have stable marriages but where
| they can't start having children until their careers are
| secure, while among low-earners the men are both economically
| and temperamentally unacceptable to their partners. So
| fertility collapses in _both_ groups.
|
| If this view of marriage sounds unfamiliar, you might want to
| see e.g. [0], in particular the point about how "top-half
| marriage and bottom-half marriage are so unalike they might
| as well be completely different institutions."
|
| [0]: https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/marriage-is-down-
| beca...
| echelon wrote:
| I think that you're right and that this is one of the
| predominant reasons for declining child births.
|
| I think that if I were a woman that I would personally choose
| career or personal life first before having children, all other
| things in my life held equal. I have a lot invested in those
| things, they're here and tangible, and they bring me joy.
|
| Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed
| that to be the leading factor. People had babies when they
| didn't have fresh food, running water, or even homes. Certainly
| far worse lives than we have today.
|
| Peter Zeihan, whose YouTube prognostications seem iffy, likes
| to call children "expensive furniture". They were useful labor
| on the farm a hundred years ago, but in small apartments they
| can be a real nuisance.
|
| Modern parenting is wild - there are too many rules and
| regulations and things just have to be just perfect to have a
| kid. Our great grandparents just had them all over the place
| and would let them roam around in the wilderness. Today we have
| to coddle and bubble wrap, sign them up for classes, take them
| places. Just thinking about it seems stressful.
|
| At the same time, we've got these little dopamine cubes in our
| pockets that are taking our time away from socializing and
| dating and meeting people. It takes time and deliberation to
| find someone to settle down and commit to raising "expensive
| furniture" with for the next twenty years. You can just keep
| scrolling your feed and filling life with experiences.
|
| Perhaps instead it's that the modern life creates the
| perception that something different or exciting could be just
| around the corner - like a kind of hedonistic treadmill, or
| wishful longing. Our ancestors just accepted their fate and
| lived their short lives. We have too many things taking our
| time and attention, and everything has to be "perfect" before
| we commit.
|
| Not making any value judgments here, just stating observations.
| itake wrote:
| Yeah, drives me crazy when governments are trying to lower
| the cost of childcare with tax incentives or creating dating
| apps to encourage connectivity.
|
| Yeah, this might convince some people, but money is not
| preventing educated women from having kids.
|
| My 31-year-old ex-girlfriend told me she needs a high degree
| of career stability, especially after recently losing her
| job. Even if she landed a new role quickly, it often takes
| 1-2 years to feel secure and fully ramped up in a new
| position. As someone at a level 4/5, she'd likely be aiming
| for a promotion once that stability sets in. Realistically,
| that puts her promotion around age 33 to 35, which is right
| around the time when starting a family becomes more
| biologically challenging.
| echelon wrote:
| Our dreams and aspirations, a product of our society, do
| not easily fit within our biology and our short lifespans.
| I'm not just talking about women and children.
|
| There's too much opportunity (good!) and too much
| opportunity cost.
|
| We're truly gradient ascent explorers in the rawest sense.
| And our adventures take us off the evolutionary path. We've
| jumped the shark on our biology.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Those sound like premodern relationships? Every with-it
| youngish person I know has long rejected that model.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| You say 'modern relationships' but I feel like you're
| describing a stereotypical 1950s relationship in that
| paragraph. The lack of contrast surprises me.
| thrownawaysz wrote:
| The fact that this was written by a man is hilarious
| itake wrote:
| how so? Most of the ideas I shared I got from the female
| author Logan Ury in her book, "how to not die alone"
| lisbbb wrote:
| Being a Dad really sucks, too--I'm unemployed at 52 at what
| should be the height of my career when my kids really need
| someone who is making money so help pay for college tuition and
| my wife has cancer, so save it how rough breast feeding is when
| breast feeding only last about a year or so anyways.
| Animats wrote:
| Well, let's see how it works for Russia. Russia has a 1.41
| fertility rate (2.1 is breakeven). Plus Russia has lost somewhere
| around a million soldiers so far in Ukraine. Deaths outnumber
| births by 1.6 to 1. They need fresh meat for the grinder.[1]
|
| Current steps being taken include:
|
| - Emphasizing family values via the Russian Orthodox Church
|
| - Restricting abortion, which was cheap and easy in the USSR days
|
| - Encourage teenage pregnancy (there's a "Pregnant at 15" TV
| show)
|
| - Encouraging immigration
|
| So far, it's not working much.
|
| [1] https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/russia-might-be-
| losing-1...
| trod1234 wrote:
| Most countries today are losing population (below replacement
| value).
|
| The US is at 1.62, Taiwan is at 0.85.
|
| There are a lot of economic factors required for having
| children that are simply not there anymore for quite a lot of
| people. Third-party malign interference has never been higher.
| Those dating apps all the women are using, they aren't matching
| people up to have babies.
|
| They are matching people up who won't ever have babies.
|
| What makes this worse unfortunately over time is intelligent
| people don't have children if they can't support them; so if
| you have growing inequality with no social mobility upwards,
| you have an evolutionary skew towards the dumb similar to the
| movie idiocracy.
| yumlogic wrote:
| Relative stability, focus on family, growth, men as head of
| household, minimal single parent families, women spending time
| with their kids.
|
| Raising kids is a full time job. I am doing both as a father and
| also as a founder. My wife does not work, does minimal
| contribution here and there. I dont know where she spends time
| but she is unavailable. I would rather do it myself than keep
| fighting.
|
| I think from population front we are not going to have baby boom
| anytime in next 30 years. Technology will create more isolation
| than ever. Laws never favor men.
|
| India, most populous country, recently dropped birth rates below
| replacement level. That is probably most fertile land (for food
| and reproduction) and yet they are falling behind.
|
| I think unless we see dramatic change in policies worldwide (not
| going to happen) that puts men and families as center of policy
| making, it will be all doom from here.
|
| Come back in 30-50 years when new generation is in charge and
| thinking patterns change.
| louwrentius wrote:
| > Relative stability, focus on family, growth, men as head of
| household, minimal single parent families, women spending time
| with their kids.
|
| This reads as deeply obnoxious sexism. Man as head of the
| household, sounds like religious fundamentalism.
| qmr wrote:
| Homer Simpson is a bumbling incompetent who manages to have a
| stable job, and can afford a mortgage, insurance for his family
| of 5, and two good enough cars as the sole breadwinner for his
| household.
|
| It's going to take something like that.
| cbdumas wrote:
| How does this square with the fact that fertility declines as
| income rises, both within and across societies?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| Because income rises with age, and fertility declines with
| age. Not that hard to figure out.
| standardUser wrote:
| That was modelled on the peak post-War nuclear family, a type
| of family entity that had not existed before and will likely
| never exist again. One person working to support 4 or 5 is not
| something we can strive for without a serious look at UBI along
| with a revolution in automation.
| crtified wrote:
| My anecdotal experience, which illustrates how changing societal
| norms may be contributing.
|
| Around 1960, my grandmother scandalously fell pregnant with my
| mother in her late teens. The child was adopted out - well, not
| out - in. To her own grandmother, to be raised as a "younger
| sister" to her own mother.
|
| Around 1980, my mother scandalously fell pregnant with me, in her
| late teens. Despite family disapproval, the child was had,
| because it was the done thing. It wasn't a time of simple, easy
| access to birth control and other procedures.
|
| In the late 90's, my late-teens girlfriend scandalously fell
| pregnant. Her parents + the medical system swung straight into
| full control, a termination was a foregone conclusion, and we
| were simply dragged along by the expectations of society at that
| time.
|
| I'm heading towards 50 now, and have no children. I guess that
| "scandalous mistake" is the only real chance some people ever get
| in life, though they don't know it at the time. And for us,
| modern society's ways effectively eliminated it.
| Qem wrote:
| I'm sorry for your loss.
| lisbbb wrote:
| What loss? It was not her but her "girlfriend" which I don't
| even know how to correctly interpret these days. Is she
| saying it was her love interest or just a friend who is
| female? Heaven knows!
|
| Kids aren't even dating anymore hardly. My son (15) is having
| a horrible time navigating social interactions. The girls at
| his school are all horrible people, it seems (not true, I'm
| sure, but I constantly have to hear about how he is treated
| like crap by the girls all the time).
| refurb wrote:
| Underrated comment right here.
|
| When the baseline belief in society goes from "make it work" to
| "better to end the pregnancy" it shouldn't be surprising that
| overall the number of birth goes way down.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I'm not sure this scans really because teenage _births_ as well
| as teenage pregnancies enjoyed a local peak around 1990. There
| certainly was not a general pan-American societal instinct
| against teenage births at that time. The rate has fallen by
| more than 75% since. Even the mother-under-15 birth rate in
| 1990 was ridiculous (about 10x more than today, in most
| states).
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I continue to think that despite the likelihood of birth rate
| being multiplicatively impacted by different factors, housing
| being stable and inexpensive has to be a leg on which all the
| other factors build. I know so many people who have put off
| having kids despite wanting them because they do not believe
| (having gone through the great recession, experiencing modern
| hiring and firing practices, the pandemic, and seeing global
| warming, and now AI, while being given a roadmap called "just go
| to college and everything will be easy" from boomers) that it's
| prudent when rent and mortgage payments hang over ever all other
| factors and when things never actually "feel" like they improve
| for them and don't seem likely to.
|
| Make housing so cheap that people feel there's nothing risky
| about working minimum age job with 3 kids and you have the first
| leg of higher birth rates being societally supported IMO.
|
| But that's not an easy place to arrive.
| yfw wrote:
| Cheaper housing, taxes on billionaires
| ziknard wrote:
| Worrying about declining birth rates on Earth in 2025 is exactly
| as psychotic as dinosaurs worrying about their investment
| portfolios the day after Chicxulub.
|
| Someone said "more meat for the grinder", which is exactly
| correct whether it is referring to a war machine or the late-
| stage capitalist shithole we've created.
|
| You're all absolutely crazy if you think more fscking people on
| this finite planet is going to solve any problem.
|
| Get sterilized.
| anon291 wrote:
| Late stage capitalist shitholes are actually really fun.
| mcdeltat wrote:
| Times like these you realise HN is surprisingly conservative
| and narrow minded
| dividefuel wrote:
| I see three big reasons why people aren't having kids:
|
| #1: Raising kids is really hard. They're expensive. They eed
| constant attention when they're young, and in modern American
| society they need to be in a bunch of activities once they're
| older. And all the various tasks of day-to-day life that don't
| disappear: work, food prep, cleaning. I spend virtually all my
| waking hours on work, chores, and childcare. Being able to
| offload some of these (or being able to _afford_ to offload some
| of these) would reduce the burden to carry.
|
| #2: People are stressed about the state of the world. Are we
| going to enter an era of greater political unrest? Is AI going to
| ruin the economic prospects of almost everyone? Is climate change
| going to ruin civilization? Most people I talk to are not hopeful
| about what the next 40 years are going to look like.
|
| #3: The network effect. When you're the only one in your friend
| group having kids, you're going to feel extremely disconnected
| from that group. You'll be the one sitting out while everyone
| goes out to have fun. But if most or all of your friends are
| having kids around the same time, it's more of a shared
| experience where you can bond over it. It's the opposite: a nudge
| to your childless friends to join in and have one of their own.
|
| The thing is, none of these are really easy to solve with policy.
| #3 basically requires #1 and #2 to improve enough to kickstart a
| feedback loop. #2 is made of the big issues of our era, and won't
| be solved anytime soon, and certainly not for the sake of
| fertility. That leaves #1, where the most you can do is to give
| money and long maternity/paternity leaves. But it would take a
| _lot_ of money /leave to really push the needle. This likely
| isn't politically feasible.
| xedrac wrote:
| As someone with 5 kids, I can attest to #1. Kids are hard and
| expensive, but they are also the single most rewarding aspect
| of my life. I rushed into having kids in my early twenties, and
| those early years were very difficult. Now that my kids are a
| bit older, I am so grateful for them. My life is infinitely
| richer because of them, even though I may have less time and
| money for myself.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >People are stressed about the state of the world. Are we going
| to enter an era of greater political unrest? Is AI going to
| ruin the economic prospects of almost everyone? Is climate
| change going to ruin civilization? Most people I talk to are
| not hopeful about what the next 40 years are going to look
| like.
|
| At least on this one I beg to differ on reality if not people's
| perceptions. You think that worry about the future was somehow
| lesser during, I don't know, the entire course of the 20th
| century with two colossal world wars, almost immediately
| followed by a cold war in which the superpowers were laden with
| planetary destruction machines and noisily, constantly on the
| brink of annihilating each other and everyone else? (in
| aggressive ways that aren't quite matched today I'd argue)
|
| Maybe social media and the always-connected modern culture of
| publicly fetishizing nearly any social/personal anxiety you
| care to think of has made people more neurotic about the
| future, but we've never in modern history had a shortage of
| things to cause that, while still having plenty of babies for
| decades.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I'm surprised it was really considered mystery. My grandparents
| told me straight up, who had four children, that the reason that
| had such a large family is because they were supposed to. It was
| their patriotic duty. Did this zeitgeist get lost a time or is it
| now some sort of secret? Perhaps it's not politically correct the
| point out that actually, people, there is a class of people who
| determine what we're supposed to believe. Just like I grew up
| thinking computers were cool just when we needed a lot of
| software developers, right before my career was outsourced to
| H-1Bs.
|
| I suppose it makes sense. It's not like there's any single place
| that documented where we're all agreeing about what we're
| supposed to believe. After all, nobody has a date where we all
| decided that hackers were really cool and awesome.
| standardUser wrote:
| The tiny period of time that allowed some men in the wealthiest
| parts of the world to purchase property and support a family of
| 4+ on a single salary was an anomaly. It was a macroeconomic
| fluke, forever lost to the specific place and time that allowed
| it to briefly flourish.
|
| There's a chance a highly-automated future could reduce our
| neccesary working hours to those boomtime levels. But the one
| thing that will absolutely, positively _not_ bring back
| prosperous single-earner households is forcing manufacturing back
| into the center of an information economy while at the same time
| fighting relentlessly to squash labor unions or any other
| attempts at worker power.
| Havoc wrote:
| > was an anomaly
|
| Unfortunately suspect this is the right answer.
| khurs wrote:
| Fix the money aspect
|
| 1. Fix Family Courts
|
| Western Family courts are based on biblical punishment (divorce
| is bad and a sin, nuclear family is good, must punish sin). And
| extreme Christian crazy Judges falsify outcomes routinely, hence
| why they are hiding behind closed doors.
|
| Leaving men broke and barely seeing their child means the next
| generations of men know not to marry.
|
| 2. Child Support
|
| No sensible safeguards of how it is spent and even if the woman
| is a high earner the man can be asked to pay 100% of the child
| costs. So men are very cautious about getting the wrong woman
| pregnant, as women are financialy incentivised to ensure a child
| lives as little as possible with the father as that means more
| money for them. You want a balance between deterrence to
| unplanned kids and motivation to have kids.
|
| Generations of men have seen what happens/been told this/social
| media and they are more wary.
|
| Many relationships and marriages fail. It needs to be normalised
| and the lunatic Christian extremists need to be put away.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > between the mid-1930s and mid-1950s, the US maternal death rate
| fell by 94 percent
|
| that's it
|
| so basically very few people - as in both partners - were
| consciously planning kids, they were just having sex, but the
| irresponsibility was curbed by nature, sanitation, as many of the
| resulting children died.
|
| of the people that were planning children, they also has to hedge
| with many dead children, but suddenly they were all living
|
| so now people had to plan for the consequences and post 1950s the
| planning resulted in real practical choices, where people
| realized they dont want children.
|
| people _never_ wanted the consequences of having children or many
| children. the history corroborates this. when both parties are
| now choosing
|
| the incentives haven't helped for that reason
|
| the incentives are all based on the assumption that family
| planning is difficult and put of reach. merely delaying something
| desired, when they just won't accept that most of has just don't
| want children and never did.
|
| we still have sex. the decline in that amongst always single
| people is new, just the last several years. couples do the things
| that make children all the time, and just don't get pregnant or
| output children.
| scubadude wrote:
| Unaffordable housing, working 3 jobs, and ever-reducing social
| safety net are the ideal conditions for people to raise a family.
| I can't work it out.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Having a kid is no longer high-status for women. The only women
| (in the US) having kids in excess of the replacement rate are the
| poorest and most wealthy, in other words those too destitute for
| child-rearing to bring them any lower, and too rich for the
| burdens of it to have any effect on them. For all those in the
| middle, pregnancy and raising a kid is catastrophic to free-time,
| career success, and a sense of freedom in one's life trajectory.
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